Tire dressing is a gel or liquid you put on the tire sidewall to make it look nice and fresh. Some types can fling onto the car while you drive, which is why detailers talk about whether it “sling”s or not.
This is the name of a tire-shine product line the hosts use. They bring it up when talking about which tire dressings work best and which ones tend to sling.
“Prep” just means cleaning the tire first before you put the shine product on. If you don’t prep enough, the product can build up and not wipe off cleanly later.
Buildup is when tire dressing residue collects over time. If you can still see shine or dressing after cleaning, it’s a sign that buildup wasn’t fully removed.
Mineral spirits are a stronger cleaning solvent. In this context, it’s suggested to break down and remove tire shine that’s stuck on and won’t wipe off.
“PRX scrub it off” is a product used to clean off something on the tire before adding tire shine. The point is to start clean so the shine goes on evenly and doesn’t cause problems later.
“Low pro tires” are tires with shorter sidewalls. The host says they can be a little different to dress because the tire looks and behaves differently than a normal-height tire, so you may need to apply dressing more carefully.
“Soaking in” means letting the tire dressing absorb into the tire instead of just staying on top. If it soaks in first, it’s less likely to smear or fling off when you drive.
Knobby tires have chunky tread blocks for grip. Because the tread is so textured, tire dressing can get stuck in the grooves if you don’t work it in and clean it out.
Instead of spraying product straight onto the tire, you put it onto the brush first. That gives you more control and helps prevent the dressing from getting flung around.
A drying aid is a product used during the drying step to improve water sheeting and reduce streaking. Detailing-wise, it can help manage residue or small spots so they’re easier to wipe away when the car is still wet.
APCs are strong cleaners detailers use to break down dirt on lots of surfaces. The point here is: if you accidentally get APC on the glass, it can leave a film or residue that’s hard to remove, so you end up scrubbing for a long time.
“Black piano trim” refers to glossy, high-sheen black interior or exterior trim that resembles piano lacquer. It’s notoriously easy to mar with residue, smears, or chemical staining, so detailers emphasize product safety and wipe technique.
The Honda Civic is a small everyday car made by Honda. People talk about it a lot because it’s common and practical, and it has limited rear-seat space compared with bigger cars. That’s why you might hear jokes about fitting larger passengers in the back.
A scissor lift is a platform that goes up and down using folding metal arms. Some versions can be used without bolting them to concrete, depending on the design.
A two-post lift is the common shop lift with two tall posts and arms that hold the car. Because it can tip or shift under load, it often needs to be bolted down to the floor.
Anchoring a lift means bolting it to the floor so it can’t move during use. This matters because lifts experience not just vertical weight, but also twisting and side forces when a vehicle is driven onto the arms or when work loads are applied.
Here, liability means responsibility if there’s a problem. The point is that if you handle installation yourself, you may end up responsible for mistakes or safety issues.
Concept
mount it to the floor
Mounting to the floor means bolting the lift down. Some lifts are designed to be fixed in place for safety, while others may be able to sit without bolting depending on the model.
Concept
service it locally
This is about being able to get repairs nearby. If you buy a lift from far away, you might have a harder time getting someone local to fix it quickly.
A pressure washer is a strong water sprayer. It can clean fast, but you have to keep it at a safe distance around the engine so you don’t force water into sensitive spots.
Acid wheel cleaner is a strong chemical used to break down brake dust on wheels. Since it’s pretty harsh, you have to use the right dilution and apply it carefully so you don’t hurt the wheel’s finish.
AWX is the brand/product the hosts recommend as an acid wheel cleaner option for first-time users. In this context, it’s being positioned as a safer, beginner-friendly choice when used with proper technique and dilution.
Dilution ratio just means how much cleaner you mix with water. For strong cleaners, using a weaker mix (more water) makes it safer while you learn how it behaves.
“High pH” means the cleaner is more alkaline/caustic. It can clean well, but it can also damage some wheel finishes if you don’t rinse it off properly.
Some wheel cleaners are acidic, and they break down brake dust better. But different wheels have different finishes, so the “right” cleaner depends on what the wheel is made/finished with.
Fuego is a wheel/tire cleaner the host uses as an alternative to harsher acid-based products. The point is to match the cleaner to the wheel so you don’t damage the finish.
Brake dust is the gritty powder that builds up on wheels from braking. It can stick to the wheel, so you need the right cleaner to remove it without harming the finish.
The host is saying there isn’t one cleaner that works safely on every wheel. Wheel finishes react differently, so you have to pick the cleaner for that specific wheel.
A degreaser is a cleaner meant to dissolve grease and oily grime. The host is saying people lump all degreasers together, but newer products can be safer and work more consistently.
TRX is a cleaning chemical the hosts like for washing cars and boats. They recommend using it the way the label intends (like with a foam cannon) instead of mixing it with whatever “old school” degreasers people used to use.
A foam cannon is a pressure-washer attachment that sprays soap as thick foam. It helps spread the cleaner evenly and lets it sit on the surface while it works.
Gel coat is the protective outer finish on many fiberglass boats. The host is saying that water mixing with the cleaner isn’t likely to cause problems for that finish.
Here, “juice” is slang for a product you put on the boat to keep it protected. They’re saying you should re-apply it often—especially after the boat has been in the water.
Wash and wax is the classic routine: wash the boat and then put wax on it for protection. The discussion is basically saying there are easier/longer-lasting options than doing this all the time.
A ceramic coating is a protective layer applied to paint/gelcoat that bonds to the surface to add chemical and water resistance. Compared with traditional wax, it’s typically marketed as longer-lasting and more hydrophobic, which helps reduce how often you need to wash and re-protect.
Term
STAK
STAK sounds like a boat detailing/protection product. They’re saying to apply it thickly because the boat’s gel coat can soak it up, so thin application may not work as well.
They’re basically saying: don’t discount your work just because it’s for friends or family. Charge your normal price so everyone’s expectations stay aligned and you avoid awkward resentment later.
Powder coating is a tough, baked-on paint finish. Since it’s a special kind of coating, you should use the cleaning approach the coating manufacturer recommends so you don’t ruin the surface.
If something on your car has a special finish, it’s smarter to ask the people who made or coated it before trying random cleaners. That way you avoid accidentally damaging the surface.
Paint thinner is a strong chemical used to dissolve paint and other sticky stuff. It can work for removing certain coatings, but it can also ruin the finish on parts you didn’t mean to clean.
Powder coating is a tough paint-like finish that’s applied as a powder and then baked on. If you damage or remove it (even accidentally), the wheel often has to be re-coated to restore the original look.
Trim pieces are the decorative parts on a car—like the moldings and other finishing bits. If one gets damaged, it can be pricey to replace, so people sometimes try to hide the damage instead.
Citrus solvents are cleaners made from citrus oils. They can help break down sticky stuff, but they may not be safe for every coating, so you have to be careful.
Tar and road paint are sticky grime that can land on wheels while you drive. Removing it is tricky because the wrong cleaner can harm the wheel’s finish.
LIVE
Welcome to the Pints and Polishing podcast, the most influential and listen to podcast in auto detailing.
Welcome to the community.
All right, so questions is funny because we're just talking through stuff that we had questions.
Both Nick and I had a lot of questions this weekend, and so it's going to be fun as we get into those questions.
Before we do, we want to jump into some rookie-esque type questions.
Before we get into the high level, right around how to respond to certain types of messages, which we've all gotten.
We've all got messages and we haven't exactly known how do I respond to this question.
So Nick and I both had some of those and so we'll get into those.
But before we do, we got some rookie ones.
All right, so these are out of some of those fun Facebook groups that are, which they do.
They're like, maybe it's like detailing for beginners or like beginner D that ride like it's, it's all around that stuff.
If you're somebody who doesn't know a lot, there's, they're in those, right?
So we can all imagine, let's just start, start thinking of what do you think these type of questions are?
Here we go.
If someone book a detail with you for interior only, are you doing the door jams?
Now, okay, like, okay, some of us, we've gotten, we've actually had that question, I know.
I remember on the community pub, we had that question.
Nick, what about you, man?
You got somebody says interior only.
So then are you doing the door jams?
Yeah, it's, it's probably is a good question.
I would say I've never really been in that position because I think your base package should probably be, you know, a basic interior and exterior.
Truthfully, in today's day and age, if you can't mix in a quick wash, you know, into your, your package, there's going to be a lot of people that deal with different scenarios up north in the wintertime and you got to do some things like that.
I think you probably have to include the door jams just because when somebody opens their car, it's going to look really, really poor.
So yeah, I would say you have to include it.
But I'd also say take a brief second and think through how to make a basic exterior part of even if it is wintertime, you know, something basic on the exterior to kind of not only boost your number a little bit, but give a little bit more value there.
And we did a face.
I'm sorry, a YouTube video on door jams and we've had a discussion about how to door jam clean.
I've always found this interesting though, because you're right, like I did this was like you said open the door you go.
Okay, if I open the door, I'm on the what of the car.
Yeah, I'm on the inside of the vehicle.
So should you touch every part of the inside of vehicle if you're going to do a interior detail.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean a lot of people just think it starts sort of at the kick plate and you know goes into the carpeted areas and the leather and the cloth seats or whatever you have.
I get that but to me it'd be more about presentation that's going to look really poor if somebody sees all that dirt and I would kind of leave it at that but I would also tell people I'd find a way to have a basic exterior package along with your interior.
I think you're going to find it's more sustainable long term, even if it's, you know, upcharge 50 bucks and just do a quick wash and you know, dress the tires up.
I just think it's probably going to work out better for you long term.
Alright question.
We've all seen it.
We've all seen the question.
We've also seen what's happened.
If somebody doesn't use which this guy's asking he goes, is there actually a tire dressing that doesn't sling.
So we do many of us think of, hey, there are tire dressings that they're just notorious.
It doesn't matter your prep.
It doesn't matter what you do.
It is going to sling.
And then there are some that are created differently.
There are.
I mean, we would probably say every one of our hyper clean tire shines, infinite shine.
You got ultra dress and then the one that not very many people use is quick shine, which I've said is my favorite.
It's it to me is the quickest, easiest way you can get a shine on your tires and fast.
Right.
And so, you know, do they sling?
When do they sling?
Could you get quick shine to sling makes got an answer to this because we also have a YouTube video where we go over it.
It's about the threat tread.
Yeah.
No, it's most of tire shine sling is improper installation of the tire shine.
Could be your prep, which is part of installing or putting on tire shine is the prep of the wheel or the prep of the tire.
I would say that probably more times than not there, you can get into some issues with buildup where people don't prep the tire enough.
And how do I know?
Let's ask that question.
Right.
How do I know if I haven't prepped it enough?
I mean, if you still see shine or dressing anywhere, you pretty much know it's not off of there.
Right.
So I like to tell people if you run into something, you know, and a lot of this happens in the pro world or if you're a consumer that's buying a new, new to you vehicle, whether it's brand new or you off of used.
If you look at it and you go, man, I've tried to clean this, this a lot and there's just whatever they use.
This would be common amongst the dealer world.
They just use this really grimy, cheap, high gloss, you know, tire shine that just won't come off.
Grab some mineral spirits in a rag and get it off of there.
Get it off of there the first time you do it.
It sucks.
I'm not saying that anybody loves doing it, but you need to get it off of there.
Okay.
But before I get to that part, I've got a scrub, right?
I'm going to grab PRX scrub it off, but there are certain tire shines.
Everybody knows what I'm talking about.
If you've experienced it where you go, what the hell have they been putting on this tire?
Okay.
Do you apply your tire shine when the tires wet or dry?
Because I ask that because I go, I think some people get to where you're going to go, listen, by the time I see that, the tires are already dry, you know, and we can go through that.
This is why I bring that up in the process type, right?
Yeah, I used when I'm blowing off the car, I take extra time on the wheels and the tire.
Okay.
I get the tire absolutely as dry as I can get it.
Obviously in the summertime, the sun, the heat, all that stuff doesn't matter, right?
That kind of helps you.
But then in the process of dressing my tires, here's exactly what I do.
Low pro tires is going to be a little different story, but most people are not working on exclusively low pro tires.
Okay.
You've got a normal tire on an SUV or on a car truck with knobby tires, whatever dressing you're going to use, the car is dried off.
You've blown it off.
You have not done anything else at this point.
Grab your 32 ounce hyper clean or your 16 ounce hyper clean spray bottle and go and take your fate, whatever dressing you've chosen and spray the tire down to allow it to start soaking in.
That now go do your final wipe, go clean your glass, go do your door jams, go do all that stuff.
Then take your brush or your applicator and whatever around there has left a little dry spot or doesn't look even take your brush and do a do a very, very minimal application to even out the tire.
Too many people are doing tire dressing at the very end.
Now I'm doing one part of the process at the very end, but it's not heavy application at that point.
It's already soaked in like if you guys are using ultra dress and you do it the way I'm telling you, there is 0% of percentage points that you're going to have sling.
Now, if you have knobby tires and you're seeing dressing sitting in the tread, take your brush and get it out of the tread just and all you're doing is working it in.
That's all you're really doing.
You're not trying to like get it out of there.
You're just trying to work it in so it's not pulled up in the tread.
You won't have sling.
I like to do it also while the car is wet.
The vehicle is still wet for another reason is whether or not you guys are a spray onto the tire or spray into a brush applicator.
Here in Oklahoma, we get a lot of wind.
I'm sure in Vegas you have that that thing.
We had 60 mile an hour last night.
There you go.
And for those of us that have seen the small little dots all over a vehicle.
Hey, you wonder why we do it while the car is wet, right?
Like you go, wait, that's going to be on the car.
Yeah, but the car is wet.
You still got a drying towel, maybe some juices or drying aid.
You're going to be able to level that out over the vehicle as opposed to if it's dried and then those dots are there.
Well, a dry car with those dots.
It's going to take a little bit more work.
Well, it's also if I was in the middle of a 50 mile an hour breeze out here in Vegas.
I'd probably be done with the spraying and just spray directly into my tire brush and I'd call it a day.
Right?
I knew you would.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the average.
Yeah.
No, no, no, no.
I'm going to think a lot more of our listeners than you use some discretion if you're in high wind situations.
I'll sing some videos for them.
Trust me.
I know.
I do.
Carefully try and cover and get the wind to block it and we kind of just lightly.
But this tire shine question and the tire dressing question, it comes up a lot, man.
And you got to work backwards.
I mean, the prep is way more key than people think getting the tire dry before you start applying and then paying attention at the very end and not trying to do all your shine at the very end is way more key than people think.
I think people are trying to give the car back to the customer when the tire dressing was just fully applied at the very end.
When you're like, dude, you had all of these steps that you could have just let the tire dressing kind of set up.
You just you just have a little bit of a process problem.
It's not it's not that hard to figure out if you just kind of think through it.
I think.
All right.
Next question.
This is question.
It says question for solo detailers.
And it's a fair question.
I know I've been in this situation.
You've been in it.
We've all been there.
What do you actually do when a lead calls while you're buffing a car?
I mean, you go buffing a car.
What about coding a car is actually even more, right?
Like you're washing a car.
Let's just say you're in the middle of a detail and somebody calls you.
Now, the interesting thing to ask a lead, somehow they knew it was a lead.
Okay.
Maybe because it was just a random phone or somebody left a message and they figured it was a lead at that point.
Or that way.
Right.
There's one way.
Right.
But but they're they're just saying let's.
So I basically was going, Hey, you got a quote unquote lead or just a random phone call.
Right.
You're right.
I think most people, whether they're buffing a car, washing a car or whatever, they're going
to let it roll to a voicemail.
We all have seen that spam as you know, it's my best friend now.
Right.
So there's people online that do marketing and they talk about, Hey, I called X many shops
and everybody sent me a voicemail.
It's like, yeah, because that's what we do.
We as a society, we, we don't really actually like to talk to people anymore.
Yeah.
You know, so we, when somebody calls us and we don't recognize the number, we, we generally
send it to voicemail.
Okay.
But I'm somebody that's in business.
Yeah.
Maybe it's a Google voice number or something where I go, okay, this is actually somebody
that maybe is thinking about my service.
What do I do?
Right.
The best case scenario and anybody who's ever sold anything will tell you answering that
phone is important.
It's going to get you more business than everyone else.
So I think where you're at in your business is very important in this discussion.
First of all, the very top end part of shops that are really trying to, you know, drum
up tons of business, they're all going to tell you they answer every call because they,
they work on volume and getting a lot of customers in and out.
The single operator that is maybe booked out one month, two months, three months has a lot
more freedom than the guy that's struggling to get booked out, right?
So I think your situation is probably going to dictate this a lot more than anything else,
but the truth is what the truth is.
If you pick up the phone every time, you're going to have a better situation than other
businesses.
So what about, what about not necessarily having me pick up?
Sure.
I know that there's detailers that have used services and I have somebody pick up and then
they go, okay, I don't have, you know, if you have a solution for somebody to pick up
the phone, that's a great solution.
But that solution, that person better know your packages, they better be able to speak
tangible English.
Yes.
I've been in some of those situations where I couldn't understand them, right?
There's plenty of things that have come out, especially we go to AI, right?
And these voice automated pickup calls, right?
Like, whatever solution we choose, we got to make sure it's, we approve it there, right?
Like, I had a thing last week where I go, listen, man.
You put your name on that, right?
As you and I say, we find a strange where people will just put their name on something,
whether that's social or whatever.
And I had this conversation where I go, you realize they're a bit, but you made the call.
It's your name.
You know, do you trust the name of your business to somebody that might not know your packages
that maybe doesn't know everything?
Yeah.
I don't know, right?
I mean, this is why we ask the questions for us to each all come to our own understanding
of what we want to do.
You should answer the phone every time.
The situation most small business owners are in, and especially service-based businesses
like detailing, you should put the polisher down and answer the phone.
That's going to be your best reality.
It's not convenient.
It's not fun to stop what you're doing, right?
I mean, we all hate it.
Because if you market your numbers out there all over the place, so you're going to get
random calls.
I don't want people to hear.
We know what the data says.
If you pick up that phone call, you have a better chance of landing that sale.
If you start to play phone tag with that person, your odds go drastically down.
So no matter what you feel personally, most people in this industry don't pick up the
phone enough, don't call people back quick enough, don't text back quick enough, don't
do any of that.
So if you want to be successful, get in the habit of picking that phone up.
And because, seemingly, you've worked hard to get the phone to ring.
So if the phone's ringing.
That's where I was going to go.
Good point.
I mean, you know, whether you paid marketing dollars for that phone call or, you know,
just blood, sweat and tears to have people referred to you.
The reason I say everybody's in a different position is because there are some operators
that are going to never run out of work.
That's the very tiny percentage.
Let's be clear, less than 2% of detailers are in that position.
Okay.
So don't just think you're in that position because you think you're in that position.
I'm telling you, it's a very tiny percentage.
So to give out the best advice, pick up the phone.
And if on the other line, they go, hi, how are you doing today?
Click and go back to what you're doing.
That's all.
That's all.
And look, it makes you mad.
It makes you mad.
I mean, I'm going to tell you, you're going to get mad about it, like, but yeah, well,
I was bringing up that for us for you to say that and of course going to get mad.
But I'm just, we got to have a plan, right?
I'm with you.
We got to pick up the phone call.
And I'm the same as everybody else.
I hear this and I just go, ah, yep.
Right.
And yeah, I mean, I think we should get into the practice of picking it up if we don't,
or what some of the things I do is I don't answer.
Apologies.
I don't say anything.
I answer the phone is my first thing.
And then if it's quiet on the other end, I know that the computer's trying to connect.
And I'll wait for just a second.
If I don't hear a, a, a, a muffle, a cough or something, then I hang up.
Then I'm done.
Right.
But I can also be the guy that goes, Hey, how can I help you?
I'll get straight to the point if, if somebody's on the other line and there wasn't some computer
generated and then they go, hi, Marshall, how are you doing today?
I won't go through that.
I'll go, how can I help you?
Well, I'm wondering that, okay, I don't need this.
And then I will, you could be rude, you can, or I do the same as I do people that come
up to my door.
Hey man, I'm in sales.
I understand what you're doing.
Keep going.
I'm not a good lead.
I'm not good for this.
I need to get off this phone call.
And if they keep trying, I go, Hey man, I tried to be polite.
Now I'm not.
And then I hang up.
Right.
Whichever mojo you want to be, right?
Well, whoever you, but you do need to have a plan.
You do need to pick up the phone and then you got to have a plan for whatever you do.
Yeah, there's, there's to be a push that I see a lot with these softwares where it
seems like guys are trying to get out of being on the phone.
I think those people are going to struggle mightily in business.
Yeah.
Better be comfortable with the phone.
I hate to break it to you that comfortable conversations with another human, whether
whether you like the conversation or not, you've got to start being comfortable with
that.
Yep.
It's, it's look, I'm not here to judge anybody, but I see a lot of posts in these software
groups and I go, that's going to be a tough ride right there.
Like just as you chose a profession that's based on selling people on the phone.
I don't know what to tell you, man, like that's, that's, that's the business you chose.
I mean, you can try to game the system.
And look, I think AI is going to get to a point.
I think you're fooling yourself if you think it's today.
You know, so let's put that out there.
We're going to get to a point where AI is going to clone your voice and it's going
to sound just like you and it's going to be able to have all these prompts put in.
But, but again, don't act like it's May 19th of 2026 because I know some people
doing that at a very high level here in Vegas at, you know, casinos.
They, people can tell it's AI.
Okay.
And they have lots more billions to, to, to implement these things than, than,
than the average shopper detailer.
Yeah.
I'm hitting zero every time.
That's funny.
All right.
So let's get into the next one.
Glass cleaning guys have a question.
Love it.
Yep.
There's a reason why I put this one.
Anytime I see a glass cleaning question, I'm like, let's go.
You're big, you're big.
If it's carpet or glass cleaning, we seem to go over that quite a bit.
Well, I know we've, I mean, when you know, right, if you know, you got the,
if you know, you got it, you, you always want to bring it up, right?
Like it is what it is.
So this gets a little different there, which is why I thought you would like,
right?
He goes, I got a workmate.
You got a what?
You're from the other side of the pond.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
So other side of the pond has a mate dropping off the new to him car.
Let's get down to it.
He's going to do some stuff on it.
And then he says the glass is particularly dirty owner smoked and
vaped as well as dirty handprints left from kids and dog slobber dot, dot, dot.
Yep.
Right.
So I wondered, has anyone used and then they go, it's that sponge, right?
That's white.
You could have a knockoff version.
You can have the original version, right?
There's all those different versions of, listen, as somebody who's bald and
white, you know, I'm okay with Mr.
Clean.
So wanted to know about using those type of sponges, whether it's a knockoff or
the original on glass.
And, you know, what do, what does somebody do in a sense?
I thought about using one with some glass cleaner and then thought, well,
maybe there's too much dirt.
So here's the deal.
Don't, don't number one, don't use this on tint.
Okay.
That would be number one.
Don't use what on tint?
Don't use the magic eraser on tint.
Magic eraser is not for real.
It doesn't matter.
Don't, don't use any of those products.
What I would say is if you used a magic eraser with revive.
Again, not in tinted windows, you'd be fine.
I don't think it's necessary.
Let me say it this way.
If you run up against something like this, heavy smoke, heavy vape, heavy dogs,
kids, while you're cleaning the interior, okay?
Cause you're not to your glass cleaning step yet.
Usually glass cleaning for all of us is at the end of the detail.
Cause you want to just kind of give it its final touch.
Just spray the window like you're cleaning it, like any other part of the
interior with revive and clean that stuff.
Keep point, keep point.
Because you're now dealing with heavy grime, heavy buildup.
And I see a lot of promises from glass cleaners.
Okay.
Could our glass cleaner get you where you're trying to go?
Yes.
Is it going to be extra work?
Yes.
You're already on the interior of the car.
You're already cleaning it up.
Just go ahead and when you're cleaning the door panel, start at the top of the
glass.
Okay.
Just start at the top of the glass.
Couple sprays.
Keep point there was revive.
Yes.
Why?
Because we've talked about APCs.
We've talked about, I wouldn't even say here, this is not a time to use
and press.
No, it's not.
I mean, any of all the other cleaners, this is the time not to use it.
You go, Hey, well, is it concentrated?
Well, Hey, is it like, no, this is a reason.
No, I'll tell you a weird thing about APC.
And I know you remember these days.
There's APCs even diluted that if you sprayed it on the top part of the door
and it got on the window and you went to try to clean the glass, you'd fight
that APC for like an hour.
Okay.
There are things in that type of formula that is going to create another head.
It's like spraying dressing and getting it on the glass.
He's like, can you, but why would you?
Yeah, you, you will try and some of the APCs I see guys using, you're going to
be trying to get that off the glass for a very long time to get it.
How do you know this?
How do I know this?
Well, we've put in the time.
How about this?
I've screwed up enough.
And I think that's kind of the key point.
It's like, guys, this isn't even coming from a chemical business.
So this is coming from the pain of screwing something up, right?
I'm not screwing it up.
Just having to do extra stuff and that's why we created revive, right?
Like you can use this, but you always wonder, Hey, well, you're just saying it
because you're chemical.
No, by the way, we sell APC.
So it's not like we can't sell you an APC, right?
It's, it's us telling you what's going to make it.
So the, the most important part is getting your mindset to
spraying your interior cleaner, which many people are not accustomed to
doing on that glass and making it a part of your process.
And truthfully, I've had times where after we're done with revive,
glass cleaner has to do very little.
I mean, now it's just basically finishing it up, making it look more tidy.
So dog slobber.
Absolutely.
That kills it.
We had an incident with somebody on our team, a makeup stain that they had
on their floor of their home that they tried every cleaning product and then
used revive on that makeup stain and it came right off.
I want to tell people this all the time.
Revive will literally make your life easier.
I don't care if you're working on your cars, on customer cars, because
it just eliminates a lot of guesswork and it also eliminates a headache
that you have to deal with.
Like APC is not going to ruin the glass.
Although I have seen it ruin tint, by the way, uh, it's not going to ruin
your glass getting APC on a piece of glass.
It's going to cause you more work, which is more time.
Yeah.
Why do that?
Why, why have the headache when there's better stuff out there?
So that's all this guy needs to do is go through, clean the glass with revive
and then finish with our glass cleaner.
He'd be good to go.
You know, 11 thing when we talk about quantifying stuff or, you know,
wanting to do cost evaluations and that type of things, I do get the ideas
when people go revive, it's ready to use.
You're right.
And then you didn't have to use that sponge, which cost you $1.53.
Yeah.
And it'll be done after you use it.
Uh, and all of those things, time, headache, having to think through things
more, if I grab revive and a microfiber towel, I don't really have to think
about anything else and I don't have to worry about what I get it on.
And I don't have to worry about if it's going to finish on a screen.
I don't have to worry what it's going to look like on black piano trim.
And I'm not going to have to worry about getting it on the glass.
Uh, I'm all for making my life easy because I have made my life tough in the
past and I have had chemicals I've used to make my life tough.
Just like I would tell you guys, don't spray your tire dressing on the glass.
Want to know how I know?
Because I've gotten tire shine on the glass before.
Like it's not because I own a chemical company.
It's like, no, man, I'm just telling you, don't do that.
It sucks.
Like I've made a mistake.
I remember one time I was like walking and I dropped the bottle of dressing,
but I caught it, it on the trigger and shot right on the glass.
And I'm like, you were like, yeah, like, how do I know?
Cause I've been through it.
You know what I mean?
It's not, it's not always some kind of big conspiracy, you know,
where somebody's trying to get you.
It's like, just make your life easier.
I promise you'll enjoy it a lot more.
Okay.
Next question.
And you have to feel this 100% because I'm not somebody that's done any of this.
That's, well, drilled hose holes into my concrete.
I mean, drilled hose.
I don't know.
Yeah, I definitely haven't drilled any holes in my concrete to do a lift.
I also haven't, um, I know people will lease out lifts.
I haven't leased a lift.
I haven't done any of that, but there's a question of somebody that goes, okay,
hold on a second, Nick.
I, maybe this is, maybe a question should go backwards because somebody's
about to go through all that work and then just under carriage wash.
I thought you put lifts in 2026 because you were going to polish.
You were going to vote and maybe I know the first guy here locally that put
a lift because he was a big guy.
I mean, he, he was, I mean, we joke about big guys getting in the back of
Honda Civics ain't going to happen.
Well, the other thing that big guys have a hard time with is, well, cars that
are lowered and I'm working on the outside, right?
I need to get this lift up.
This is part of what this is.
This is the awesome part of our industry, trying to help the, the negative part,
right? The negative part is the, the degradation of our bodies.
If we're a big person, how hard it is to lift, lean over.
If you're somebody's got a bad back like me, well, it's hard to, to lean down
to those lower rocker panels or clean the door jams.
Like we talked about a second ago, right?
Like there are reasons we talk about this.
I haven't been in this situation because, well, I never got there.
Yeah, you have, you actually put in a lift.
Yeah. So my, my lift is, is still portable.
I don't have it screwed through the concrete.
I don't have a need for that for why, because of the way the lift is built.
The specific lift is built, you know, so they listed like a scissor lift
and then a two post lift, right?
Yeah. So two, so two posts lift, you have to have, you know,
you have to have it anchored in the ground, right?
And that's like, if you go to a dealership or a mechanic and they have those arms.
One of the weird things in the lift community is if you work with a local
lift, you know, broker, seller, whatever, a lot of times they'll come
install the lift. I don't know why people are getting so heavily involved in this.
There's a lot of liability that's going to be put on your shoulders.
And there's going to be guys that, that write in or send us a message and
said, I did my own. Cool. Yeah, I could do my own.
But the lift that I purchased, they had a distribution center here in North
Las Vegas. If I wanted them to come down and, and mount it to the floor,
they would have done it. I just said, Hey, I need to be able to move this around.
I don't have an exceedingly big shop.
I need to be able to move it out of the way. And it's sturdy enough.
There's a lot of scissor lifts. You don't have to mount to concrete. Okay.
They're not, some of them aren't even built to do that. They actually don't
have a mounting point. I think when you choose a lift, one of the things I
would say is this is one of the times it's probably going to be very
advantageous to deal with a supplier that's local. Something goes wrong with
the lift and you bought it offline. Who's going to service it locally?
What about that team who lift?
Yeah. Well, that's kind of what I'm getting at. You know, it's like, Hey,
take it at your own risk. Maybe it comes out, you know, all roses for you.
But if you're running a serious business, just find a great local lift company.
Maybe they don't have the exact brand you saw online, but you research the
brands they carry and they're highly reputable by those instead of getting
yourself in a situation where you're trying to figure out how to mount this
lift when you're like two miles away as the lift company. That seems kind of
like one of those no brainers to me. But I've had this question a ton.
I mean, I just, I just have and I got news for you. I see a lot of guys take on a
lot of liability and many of you will do just fine. I'd probably rather just
have somebody who's a professional and sells lifts and puts lifts in for a
living locally come in and help me out. I'm going to ask a theoretical question.
Yeah. Right. We're done with that question. Do you find it interesting though that
they asked about undercarriage washing and they're going to invest X amount it
is for a lift because they find it so beneficial to undercarriage wash and
that that could have different flips of the coin, right? We don't know if this
person is up north and we go, we could go, Hey, yeah, if we're up north, we could
actually market that and you could market some other things you do. I get it.
I just, I really, I do understand that. I find it curious though and interesting
that they didn't, they didn't think of the other stuff that
traditionally we've seen when people talk about lifts, right? Like is in,
let's see, we're now in May of 2026. Is this something that gives us a sight into
the psyche of what people are thinking? Yeah, I think would have to assume
they're undercarriage washing for the ability to put protection on the undercarriage of the car.
That would be my guess. I think those things can be valuable in the climates that people operate in.
I also think it's incredibly dirty. I think you need to understand where you're doing it
because I've watched that go bad more than I've watched it go well.
Just like I see people that get into think they're going to make all this money off ice,
you know, dry ice and you go, well, is this thing contained? Because that stuff starts
flying around your shop. We've also seen, you know, we have people in our network that
got heavy into industrial type coatings and things like that. And they go, you know, that stuff gets
everywhere. You know, so you've got a lot. You mean you can't just sit there with the spray gun?
Yeah, I mean, I know. It's a great product. Like, and there's a lot of industrial stuff
that I go, man, that's that could be a great business. If again, you're not trying to detail
cars, put on tint, put on PPF in the same general big. It is always interesting, right? They're
just showing this general place and it's like, here, just spray it. Yeah, it's like, oh, now
that's all that's all over everything in the shop. Yeah, man. I would say we are going to see people
as the economy tightens. Everybody thinks the grass is greener somewhere else. Oh, well, if I add
this service, if I do this thing, there's certainly people that do it successfully.
But those people have thought through it have invested properly, which is a lot more money than
you think a lot more time than you think they are containing these areas. So those areas are sort of
isolated in their shop. It's not in this big open area, or they have a tent situation that they
know how to tent off cars and they're charging appropriately. Yeah, man, I mean, I think this
stuff is going to come up more and more. But that doesn't mean that it's something people should chase.
Now, if you have huge fleet contracts and things that that you're driving towards, I think it can
absolutely be something positive. Next post that we're going to go into, it's a two part post that
well, very interesting. They asked a question, but happy to bring it on board. Let's go. Right.
First part of it is, I'm going to be cleaning my engine bay for the first time tomorrow.
Any tips for a beginner you could share, please and thank you. All right, so I'll give my just one
tip that I've always said, you can give your tip. And then we'll get to the second part of his question.
My tip that I always give with engine bay cleaning is make sure you realize you need to spray from
all different directions. Yeah, that's, that's the pre spray, that's the cleaning
post spray, like whatever you're spraying, spray it from all different directions. Of course, there's
the make sure it's not hot, make sure that like you get past all that stuff. I think the number
one thing that I always saw with, with people with detailing engines is maybe they thought the top
and it will run, you go, yes, for most of it. But we're talking a detail here. This is a detail
of an engine. And as somebody who had a customer lose a car show, because I didn't do their engine
properly. This was 2000. And I'm going to go, I think it was like 2005, something like that.
You learned the hard way. I did all of us learn the hard way. I did. I learned the hard way. And
as those of you who have won, I was the phone call of going, Hey, man, the judge left everything
you did. Then he popped the hood. I go, Yeah. Yeah, we lost. Yeah, you probably should have
been a little bit more detailed. I like I like the tip of spraying in different areas. Again,
you're going to use unload the bottle. Okay. That's what happens. Unload the bottle.
If you're scared of the pressure washer, there's nothing in the rulebook that says you have to
use one would be my tip. I think there's a lot of guys that are very uneasy with using the pressure
washer. I don't think you should be. You just need to keep the pressure washer away from the
engine. You don't need to stick the wand down, you know, a centimeter from the, you know,
the parts you're trying to wash. There's nothing wrong with using a pressure washer. We have a
video on you on our YouTube where we show you and I on that FJ cruiser cleaning up an engine bay.
There was no adverse reactions, right? Because we know what we're doing. But if you're scared of
the pressure washer and you're already going in nervous, grab a whole bunch of rags in a bucket
and, you know, you know, with some water in it and chemical and brushes and do it by hand,
right? Like don't do something you're all scared about because that's kind of the time when bad
stuff happens. Ask me how I know. Okay, just, you know, and again, if you have a steamer,
I know a lot of guys out there have a steamer. Great time to use one. Yes, it's going to take
you longer. But if you are scared of the pressure washer, do not just go eff it and start going
around. And then when something bad happens, just start freaking out. Just if you're that nervous,
try washing your own engine bays so you can understand what you're trying to do before
you start washing other people's that's if you're nervous. There's a lot of guys out there that
are not nervous at all. They know exactly how to use it. Keep the stuff will keep the pressure
washer away, high up from the engine. Okay, this is not a time where you're trying to get mud off
a wheel well. And you, you know, you get, you know, an inch away from the parts and pieces of the
engine. That's just and if you see exposed electrical cover it up. All right, so the guy with the FJ
was Jay, who made a purchase late last week. Nice. And he picked up the product. Yeah,
nice. Because he's my customer and not so many of your customers make purchases. Yeah,
we do have a lot of that's okay because mine are taking care of they don't work on their own stuff.
We do. Don't try to slip that past everybody. All my customers hire us to take care of their stuff.
But my customers are the ones that like to also take care of their and because like,
let's be honest, you're not heavy into detail on these days. You know, the benefits of being
at HQ. Oh, I'm too busy. Oh, I got other stuff going on. Like let's all let's all say it with
each other now. So Jay, because I was too busy and bought a house in Phoenix, can't go to Phoenix.
Yeah. Nope. But he was telling me last week when I was showing him my beamer and he showed me his
his beamer, which I didn't know he had bought and it was some in something and I go wait,
yours is a lot better than mine, right? Probably sitting a lot better. Yeah, we got it.
But you know, we're chatting there chatting and he goes, you probably didn't know I got a house
out in Phoenix, did you? And I go, I didn't. I got who you using there? He goes, well, I used and he
had to look it up because he wasn't a good experience. I go, listen, we got a guy, his name's Zaya,
go see Zaya. Yeah, absolutely. He's going to come see Zaya. But he he's a fun guy because he
actually he goes, you know what I love about Phoenix? He goes, every weekend, every weekend,
it doesn't matter. There's something in the car culture there. Always. Always. So he found a love
outside of when I've said to people, the lack of car culture here. I mean, it's it's miniscule.
But anyway, we were trying to go into that. Well, the next question was something that he brought
up something that everybody has is this guy has to write it's it's once you get past the other
stuff. We all want to know. And what's the best way to clean my wheels? Yep. And this is the next
question, right? I told you guys there was a two part question engine bay. And then he goes, also,
what's the best acid wheel cleaner for someone who has never used an acid wheel cleaner before?
Any tips for the way to use and to get best results?
AWX would be our answer. And this goes back to what we just said about the engine,
if you're nervous about using an acid, number one, start by using it on your own stuff.
Okay, for some reason, and I actually know the reason, but it's probably not obvious to everybody.
For some reason, people aren't trying out enough stuff on their own stuff.
It's okay to try it on your own stuff, man, on a mom's vehicle, on a dad's friend's
vehicle, and let them know, Hey, man, I'm trying this thing. You know, hope it goes well. So
non paying. Maybe if we were we're a little apprehensive of that, because we're not sure
the product, we need to go listen, I'm trying to learn. Yes. I think there's a key point. Like,
anybody that's quote unquote, trying to do something in business, trying to get somewhere in
their next level, we'll have to learn. So anybody that's older is going to realize, oh, you're
trying to learn. Yep. Wait, why you're a younger person trying to learn something. Yeah, they're
going to be good. They're going to be good. So the next thing, just diluted a little bit more. Okay.
For some reason, we are watching people, especially Facebook groups, we're watching really
experienced people tell others their process, which is great. You know, here's what I've learned
so many years into business, not realizing that they know all the secrets of acid,
they know all the downfalls of acid, they know all the positives of acid, they are comfortable
with acid, they had their dilution ratios perfect, because they've been using it for 20 years.
If you're nervous about it, dilute it more. It just makes it a little bit safer. I mean,
an over diluted acid and a little brush is much better than yeah, you could you could list anything.
Yeah, I mean, or acid cleans better than a high pH, like it just does. Yeah, when you're talking
about wheels, and talking about the brakes, and talking about all the contaminants that gets on
the wheel, it just or if you're not comfortable, use Fuego and TRX as your wheel and tire.
It's no problem, right? Like nobody here, we don't speak this way says you have to use an acid.
Like there's there are wheels we take care of. If I found out my guys sprayed an acid on it,
there would be really big problems, because it's just not worth the squeeze on that car.
Number one, it's not that much brake dust. Relax, dude. You don't need all that. Okay.
Um, so I don't even use in my business 100% AWX or 100% Fuego or anything like that.
We we have gotten so far removed from analyzing the car in front of us. It's almost now like a meme.
You know, to me, it's like guys, just analyze what's in front of you. There are some wheels
that are ultra sensitive that I it doesn't matter how dirty they got, I wouldn't use an acid. I'd
be like, this wheel is really expensive to replace. This wheel is really problematic.
It's really finicky finish from the manufacturer. I know that stick Fuego on it, move on with our life.
Like there is no universal. If you use acid on everything, you're smart and experienced. And
if you don't know, I make that call all the time. Now, when I'm taking care of stuff here at the
shop that's mine and I've let it go a little too long, is it getting acid? Yeah. I've already told
you guys that. But I've also had customer cars come in the shop that have been a little bit neglected.
And I go, I don't like the way acid is going to play on these wheels. I don't even like a little
bit of risk because these wheels are $7,000 a pop. I'm not doing it. Like it's as simple. So I tell you
it's okay to like you said, to tell people you're learning, but don't do that on a customer's car.
Okay, just don't do that part. Okay, because I saw a wheel cleaner from another company.
Somebody sent me where it's quote unquote, a safe wheel and tire cleaner. They had bronze wheels,
and now they had all kinds of purple markings and all kinds of burn marks on their bronze wheels.
You know what happened? He didn't rinse it off. It's just a high alkaline wheel cleaner. It caused
damage. It caused damage. Why did it cause damage? Because the guy using it didn't rinse all of the
chemical off the wheel. So acid and high alkaline is not magically some safe thing. But with Flago,
that's pH neutral, I'm not really going to get into those issues. So you got to use your brain
a little bit. But if you're trying to get comfortable with acid, dilute it a bit more.
It's always on a cool wheel. Let's make that clear. But it's also okay to try it a whole
bunch on your own stuff or a family member stuff that like you said has an understanding of what
you're trying to do. It's okay to do that and get comfortable and then go out into the to the business
world and use it. So inside the you just brought that up about AWX and Fuego. I saw inside of the
specialist group. So I just want to take a half a second go. Listen, I wouldn't spray AWX and then
Fuego on top of it. Yeah, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. I know somebody
and they were like, Hey, listen, the results are incredible. Like, I'm with you. I get it. Now the
only the argument I'll say this, the only argument to use Fuego is if you still see
embedded metal contaminants. Okay, but rinse it first. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say don't make some
two. Yeah, you don't need to spray the wheel and then spray don't spray AWX and Fuego at the same
time. Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. And then come back. Yeah, yeah, and then come back. Yeah.
So just to clarify, yes. Because there are times you look down and you go, man, there's just all
kinds of embedded shit on here. And then you have to take care of it. But yeah, don't you don't
need to mix the chemical in any way. And don't that's I'm just saying don't yeah, yeah. What it's
going to do is just create more work for you, you know, to me. And it's not neutralizing itself or,
you know, neutralizing AWX, because you need a higher alkaline to actually neutralize an acid,
and there's no alkaline in Fuego. Alright, so those are questions outside of us. And let's go into
then I said, we're going to have some questions that were asked. Well, via text or via phone,
whether it was you or whether it was me, we got to ask quite a few questions this weekend. I think
it's interesting. Whether it's, you know, the weekend before Memorial Day, right? So we got to
think of the start of the season. Generally, most people consider Memorial Day, the start of detailing
season, right? It is generally when most people here in the Midwest is when we we get out our
boats and we're ready to get back out onto the light, right? Whatever it is, right? It could be
Jay talking about the all the different car shows are now starting to pop. Every Memorial Day is
going to have a big giant car show. The weekends have already started with more and more people
going out to events. So we generally consider Memorial Day sort of the
launch of the season. Now, did April do well? Yeah, a lot of us do well in April, but
well, you know, let's call it what it is, Memorial Day's launch. So
we got to ask quite a few questions. Yep. You got to ask questions. I got to ask questions.
Great. Love these. Here, like I mentioned about boats, I think it's particular because
it is the time we consider that go get your boat out. I know Mildren and other people with
boats, they have their season of whether it's the fish or the lobster or whatever it is in your
area that's doing whatever they do. That's when people go out right here. Now's the time and it's
I got to get my boat cleaned out to go out to the lake. So one question from a guy that details
and he's a detailer regularly, but he hadn't really worked on boats very much. So he goes,
hey man, I got a guy and it wasn't a customer. He was just a buddy. Like, hey,
I got a guy. It was like, what was the guy? Oh, it was just a friend. Oh, okay. I got a friend who
bought a boat and wants to know how to clean it. He go, great question. Yeah. Like, hey, I'm just
buying a boat and I want to clean it. Now, I told him what Mildren's told us and what other people
in our industry. Sorry, I don't mean the same industry inside of our community inside of hyper
clean have told us what they'd like. And I go, listen, tell the guy to pre soak it in TRX. Yep.
Now, TRX is great for this. When you're going to put on, I know you don't work with a whole lot
of boats, but we've talked to plenty of people. Are you a foam cannon? Are you a pump sprayer?
No, I'd be foam, foam cannon. Yeah, foam cannon. And I've people have a very big misconception
of foam can it dilutes itself. You know, so with soaps like foam wash, whatever an ounce or two,
you're good to go, right? It's but with TRX, I am a go full strength, especially if I was cleaning
up a boat, I just go full strength TRX and let the foam cannon meter it out. All right. So here's
the cool part. I want us all to realize this moment. You ask an average boat guy or any normal
person, they go full strength. Yeah, what are they going to do? Right? Like, because grease like me,
my bad, I didn't mean to say, right? Like, any of that great, we're like old school. Yes, right? Like,
in a white thing, and that was a degreaser at a part store, right? Like any of that stuff,
they've all heard about the I've even heard of people talk about, well, can I just put
pine salt, right? Like, any of the like degreasing type things, they associate all as one. Here's
a great differential for us. A reason to bring up TRX, a reason to talk about why you recommended
and why you use it on the wheels of a car, why you recommend it as pre wash on a boat.
It doesn't have all that crazies fill in the blank, use whatever, just bookative or whatever
you want to do, doesn't have all that stuff is formulated for a modern age. Yeah, it's
not everything's created equal man. And I realized people have a lot of stuff they tried in the past
and maybe that didn't go well. And there's a variety of reasons why it didn't go well. Some of it,
they didn't actually follow the directions. Some of it is it's really poorly old school
formulated product that did introduce some danger. And you and I certainly worked with
plenty of those types of chemicals in our career, because things were what they were, right? We're
so far beyond that now. So if you're cleaning up a boat, man, just dump in TRX full strength,
let the pressure washer and the foam cannon meter out the product. Okay, because that it's
introducing water to that product. Even if it didn't introduce water, it's not this big of a deal.
Okay, gel coat and things like that. And also, I don't think anybody buys a boat saying I want
to be outside all day, messing with my boat instead of being on the lake. Okay, so just clean the boat
up, do it efficiently. And you're actually you're more likely to do it more often, which is sort of
the boat problem. The boat problem is most people don't do it often enough. If you make the clean
up a little bit simpler with something like TRX, you're more likely to, you know, clean your boat
up more often. I think a lot of people that have boats and RVs, because they don't have a great
process and a great selection of products, they clean it less often, which makes them more costly
when they actually need somebody to come in and do it. Yeah, great point. So then after your
pre wash, I told them cleanse, right? Let's keep going even more. Let's get down even more cleanse.
But here's the here's the what you mentioned. Here's where I said the third thing that you need,
you need juice. Oh, yeah. You need juice every time you come out of the water. Every time you
touch the boat, whether you've washed it or what, you need juice, you need to freshen up everything
on the inside with juice. You need to freshen everything on the outside of juice.
Regularly putting juice on your boat is going to help you dramatically. I'm going to say something
about boats that I kind of feel so it's still a big wash and wax community. They still love
to wax their boat. Guys, for any of you that do a lot of this, we see a lot of guys doing this.
I'd rather just load up the boat every season with stack.
Then listen, I'm glad you brought that up. William put in right? Yes, that actually cheating.
He said ban it. Yeah, it's light of our group. Yeah, he said stack on a boat's cheating. Yes,
because number one, protection on a boat. And boat guys will kind of say this,
there's a lot of over promising in that community right now.
Guys, lay a thick layer of stack at the beginning of every season before the boat hits the water,
you're good to go. Get out of this wash and wax stuff. This is crazy. I mean, to me,
as a guy that understands what is out there, my wash and wax package would be a wash and coat
package pretty quick. Because by the way, it'll go faster too. Oh, much faster, you're right.
Because we could all remember all that, like roughing off that. That's why I hated doing boats.
Yeah, like brutal. I didn't go too far down that boat alley, let me tell you.
So when I got the question this weekend, let's all think for a second, how would I respond to this?
Well, I want to pay you to keep my boat. How would you respond if it was a family member
who just bought a boat and wants to also then have a few beers with you while you coat the boat?
I'm like, listen, I'm sending the stack as fast as, as fast as I can to him. Like, hey man,
listen, I get it. I'm thankful that you want to use a ceramic coating from hyper clean on a boat
that you just bought. You've had some random texts from family members. We've all had it, right? Like,
hey, I just bought a boat. Listen, congratulations, my guy. I'm very happy for you. Good job. You want
to have me out this summer, happy to come out and enjoy your boat. Wait, what? You want, you want,
you, no, no, no, my guy, you're the boat owner. You need to protect your own boat. I'm not going
to come protect your boat for you. Yeah. Come on. We've all been there.
got those questions. Hey, man, can you come help? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I used to do that back
in the day when I was younger. As you get older, you get some wisdom. Listen, I'm good. I'm going
to send I'm going to do Williams wisdom. Williams wisdom is the best. Listen, man, here, just take
some stack. So when you put in the stack on, you need to put it on thick because gel coat absorbs
in. Yeah. So you need to put it on thick, put it on. Like, is that there's probably not the time
to do the spray, right? People inside the group have asked about your little caps, whether you
got the caps or not, maybe pour it out on the applicator, right? The gel coat is going to soak
it in and it's stuck here. William, you're right, it's almost like cheating. It's like cheating
the family member who says, Hey, come on, let me pay you wink wink. What? Yeah, how are you going
to pay me? You ain't going to pay me whether some customer is going to pay me? Well, what I've learned
with the family and that's their answer. I've learned with the family and friends thing.
Send the price. And I don't, I've learned the hard way as you have. And for
those of you getting to start, this is going to sound like we're giving harsh advice.
It's learned advice. Is it harsh? Yes. Yes. Send the price.
And not discounted. Because when you send the discounted price and this doesn't go well, because
it has all the makings of not going well, trust me, as many of you probably know yourself,
you're going to wish you charge full price and you're going to have a lot of resentment and
they're going to have resentment. And you and I have actually had some situations together
on that where there's resentment with trying to hire people and getting people in that we both know.
So here's the truth, men. It sounds great to help your family and your friends.
And we all want to do that. But when you're running a business, it's easy for that to get out of control.
And I would just advise many people to be very cautious in these situations, because when it
goes bad, there's a high likelihood that relationship is never the same. So, you know,
have I, when I first got into detailing, did I take care of my mom's stuff and my dad's stuff and do,
yep. But that's your mom and that's your dad. When it's your brother, when it's your sister,
when it's your cousin, brother in law, when it's this, your sister in law,
that's not your mom and dad. Your mom and dad are in this. Those are your parents.
Everyone downstream of that. That's not your mom and dad. You know,
I'd say grandma and grandpa probably can be in the mom and dad situation.
Many of us of our age don't exactly have all those people around anymore. So,
but you get outside those sort of the top of the food chain family members and you get down,
you know, it's going to get ugly, man. So send your price, treat them professionally,
don't discount it otherwise. And even doing all this right stuff, just know it could turn ugly.
Sure. And if you go, listen, I want to like, I gotta give them something. Okay. Maybe you,
you charge this, whatever, and you give some extra. Okay. I can give it, but you got to charge,
right? Yep. And you got to put at least enough so that when you're out there sweating,
and you're not looking over them, having a beer, having a beer. And you go, wait,
is that my customer or is that my my inlaw? Yep. Why is his ass not over here? Yes. Because we
say experience. And listen, we I've had that. Oh, yeah. I have to talk to you guys that are
listening. You've had that a lot of us have had that. So just make sure that you're covered and
take care of yourself. All right, let's, let's get to the next one. And this is another question
from my phone. And there's an old buddy of mine named Chad. Now, Chad and I were on the golf team
together. And we think that we could take Nick. We do. That's, that's a bad bet. We were on the
eighth grade golf team. That's what I was saying. That's a bad bet. But we've stayed in touch, right?
This is why I love sports and love stuff is you just stay in touch. Now, Chad, Chad's venture in
life was he became a home painter. And and could I love the thing, you know, the stuff that they
can do with styrofoam? Oh, yeah, painting that to make it look like wood. Yeah, it's cool. Never
swore like you never thought it was what you thought it was a wood beam up at the ceiling.
But it was a faux painted thing that he put together. Now Chad was also my roommate when I
first started my business. He's the guy that that got me into it. He's a guy that that was at the
Chinese restaurant. And he said, Hey, I've seen some people cleaning cars down the IGA, right? If
you guys remember, IGA is a throwback throw. That's a Midwest throwback. It's a very big throwback.
He calls me. And he says that we're his kind of history. We're talking about in-laws. He's got a
really great system and then and but whatever. His in-law had been in
one of those big boxes that done some stuff, right? Whether it was tar, whether it was paint,
whether it was asphalt. This is just a phone call. So but they got a lot of stuff all over,
right? They drove through and he's calling me. He's in a panic. He's like, Listen, it's all over
the tire. It's all over the wheel. It's all over. What do I do? All right. So first suggestion,
since we at hyper clean, we don't have on sale or something to resolve that. I gave him some
mineral spirits, some different things to do on the wheel. He he was using like a plastic scraper
and he's trying to be beneficial. Now, here's where I get to the question, right? Here's the
point of the question is he goes, Hey, this wheel is powder coated. I go, Oh, I said, Listen, I'm
gonna pull a Nick Walters move right here. I'm gonna say, stop thinking about what you should do.
Go call them and ask them what you should do. The same as like if you spilled paint
on the inside of a car, call the paint company. Yep. Or hey, listen, I got something and it's
been powder coat. Let me call the powder coated company. Yep. Like maybe they know there are
there are some things like we get to those situations where you go, I'm okay deferring.
I'm okay. Yeah, I mean, smarter. We're little
trying to be helpful. We get a little advice happy. Right? Like we want to be helpful. It's
a guy calling you that you know, and they need your help. And sometimes,
like one of the things is like paint thinner. You know, I mean, that was like one of the
things we did back in the day as we used a lot of paint thinner to get stuff off the bottom of
cars. I know you were there. Yeah. And I told him about that's what his point was. Well, what if it
gets on the wheel? I said, Listen, I don't know. Yeah, well, what if it gets on the wheel? Yeah,
could f up your wheel, like, or it could be fine. I look, man, I mean, you're gonna have to shoot
your shot, right? Like that. But like you said, advice has to have a point. Like you got to come
to a head and go, I'm not given that advice. And the spilled paint thing comes from my neighbors
here at the shop, that we literally found that that paint manufacturers like, Yeah, just take
straight down dish soap, it'll all come off the inside of the car. And boy, it just came right
off. I mean, we would have been there. I tried like 10 products I hear at the shop that I thought
would work better than that. They're like, No, no, no, it's formulated, just take the blue
dawn dish soap and put it right on the spots, it'll come right out. Boy, that I mean, it's like
took two seconds, right? So that is the advice. And the advice you got to remember is
there's a lot of things I feel very comfortable using things like paint thinner on because I
used it on a whole bunch of stuff in my career, because that's how we were taught on certain
stuff. But when you're giving that advice out. Now you run into that friend maybe never calling
you again when he uses it on that wheel, and the wheels completely messed up. Because likelihood
is what he's going to find out from the powder coating company is, yeah, we know it'll take
that off, but your car, your wheels are going to have to be repowder coated. So before he goes down
this road, if he had it powder coated locally, and he takes it in there and they go look, we'll
show you how to get it off. But your wheels are never going to look the same. Or for 600 bucks,
we'll just, you know, powder coat all the wheels or 800 bucks will powder coat all the wheels.
A lot of people are just going to choose to have all the wheels powder coated, right?
This is what we tell people a lot about trim pieces. Hey, you fried a trim piece and you're
sitting here trying to cover it up. If you called Ford and it was $25 for that trim piece.
What are we doing here? Why are you trying to cover it up? Just pay the 25 bucks and learn.
You know what I mean? This is a time to give a call to these people that have done the
refinishing. No doubt about it. Yeah, there's a great point about the trim piece. I mean,
I don't know a trim piece in 2026 that is $25, but oh, look, I mean, okay, I've had to replace some
trim pieces on on some of my trucks. You'd be surprised. I'm not saying all of them. Okay,
I don't want it. It's still worth it. Yeah, call it 75. That's my point. Yeah, like it's still worth
it. Like that's sort of what I said to him is like, this man, you could be spending more time
scraping and doing this like, hey, call the powder coating company. If your concern was about the
wheel, call the wheel company. Like, and I don't call for some like somebody that's going to give
you some magic answer that's not from there. There's like citrus solvents that can be kind of stuff
that you use. I mean, there's all kinds of but it's all got a risk to it smoking mirrors though.
Yeah, right. This is our industry. And if we want to be professional in these moments,
we got to tell them, hey, I'm not sure. Yeah, so go call those people that put on the the powder
coating. Yeah, and they'll know. I mean, they've dealt with it. Trust me, if they're powder coating
wheels, they you aren't the first person to go through some tar and some road paint and
shit like that. But there are if he was a customer calling a not a buddy. Oh, yeah, are those listeners
that go, Sure, man, bring it on in. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Now you can make the call to the powder
coating company before he gets there, which you should point. Yeah, yeah, who who powder coated
your wheels. So you can give them a call and say, look, somebody you powder coated their wheels for
has gotten into a real situation. What can I use here? That's that's that's sort of the point,
right? Yeah, it's okay to give somebody a call. And, you know, that's that's kind of the the
end of this podcast has all been about people making a phone call and asking people for help,
right? Like it's okay just to go. Alright, man, drop by the shop. And while who did the powder
coating and then calling that phone number yourself and being like, Hey, he ran through some tar,
some road paint. I don't know what man, like what can I get? Oh, well, here you can use this,
then you use it your life's made easier, their wheels look great. You're good to go. You didn't
take any risk because they told you exactly what would work. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, final question
as I just said this past weekend was the pre weekend of Memorial Day weekend. This coming weekend,
you'll listen to it to most of you will listen to it before Memorial Day weekend. And so I got
a question is a wonderful question. Hey, should I use pro 20 now? Or should I wait for Memorial Day
weekend? It's a wonderful question. It is because this is a professional inside of a shop going, Hey,
are you going to give a better deal? No, are you going to have some like new thing for us? Right,
because there's a lot of companies that do there are but we've had a stance we have had a stance
over the years listen pro 20. If you're somebody that has a shop, if you're somebody that's mobile,
if you're somebody that is quote unquote pro, the best time for you to buy is using pro 20.
That is the best time. Yep. Now, do we have these four times a year, three times a year? You know,
does it go interchange where do you have some moments where you go into a weekend, and you get to
save some you can, but you never get over 20. You never do. No, we protect. Number one guys,
we protect our distributors. One of the things people don't realize is a lot of companies don't
treat their distributors well. We don't like that type of business. We just don't believe in it.
You know, for people that are supporting us for all you pro 20 users for all you distribute
distributions, we're never going to ever, you know, do a better deal than what you guys get for
supporting us all year long. So you never have to worry about that with us. We don't really talk
about that a lot, but there's a lot of reasons and I think a lot of upstanding business reasons
to never do that. You know, so that's kind of our take on the whole thing guys is we're just
not going to do that. We know the people that have supported us. We don't want our distributors
to be put in an awkward position and we don't want our pro 20 users to feel like
because it's Memorial Day, somebody got a better deal. That's not that's not how it works. So it
always be less than the pro 20 account. It'll never be more. Yeah, never. Yeah, never. Yeah.
So it's just not how we do business. And I think everybody when we kind of say it like that, you
probably understand that that we understand how to take care of people and, and, you know, take
care of our network. And that's more important than running some deal. No, we do know people are
looking, people are going, Hey, what can I get for like, we understand. So if you're somebody that
has always won, great pro 20 is there. It's never Yeah, and I want to say this, the way to can to
stay connected to us guys is, you know, get on the newsletter, get on our email, socials,
you know, all of that kind of stuff that network be in hyper clean specialist. That's the network
of staying informed. And we go through a lot of trouble to make sure there's a lot of avenues
to watch what we're doing and be aware of what we're doing, right? So getting involved is kind
of one of the things that I know people have grown tired of in the world, right? Because so many
companies are hitting you for from 50 angles. But with us, we use all of those avenues very
strategically to make sure you're a part of everything. Yeah, we don't like getting hit.
So we don't hit you. Yeah, yeah. Like you guys notice, you don't you don't get a bunch of texts
from us. And we don't do that, right? Like so, we don't even send out compared to most companies
that are sending out, you know, five emails a week, like, we don't do stuff like that, right? So
it's important. If you're wondering these things, getting attached to everything, our YouTube channel,
our TikTok, our Instagram, our emails, like our Facebook group, that stuff is used professionally
by us, not something that we abuse. Yeah. All right, we'll see everybody. Enjoy your week.
Enjoy your weekend Memorial Day weekend. So we will be off next week. And we will see you guys
in two weeks. Hope you guys have a great time. You guys do.
About this episode
The hosts tackle scope and workflow questions, starting with whether an interior-only detail should include door jambs and explaining how winter expectations can change what’s bundled. The episode then zeroes in on tire dressing “sling,” covering why it happens (prep and improper application), how to prevent it with soaking/timing, and what to do on knobby tires and in high wind. Later, they pivot to boat detailing: pre-soak with TRX, protect with STAK at season start, and apply thickly on gel coat.
Discover expert insights to elevate your detailing business by mastering common challenges and avoiding costly mistakes.
This episode dives into essential strategies for handling client messages, choosing the right products, and optimizing your timing for peak season success.
Learn how to tackle typical questions about door jams, tire dressings, and lead calls with professionalism, boosting your reputation and client satisfaction.
Nick shares valuable tips on proper tire prep and application, thorough glass cleaning, and managing unexpected disasters like spilled paint or powder coating issues.Gain a competitive edge with product recommendations like Fuego and TRX, and navigate tricky client situations without harming relationships or your business.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, these insights will help you close more sales, avoid errors, and build a trusted brand. Backed by real-world experience and honest advice, this episode offers practical wisdom to save time, reduce stress, and grow your detailing business confidently.
Get ready to turn everyday questions into opportunities for profit and professionalism.
