Ceramic coatings are often marketed as low-maintenance solutions, but the reality is that their failure primarily stems from a lack of proper maintenance. Joe from Vanta emphasizes that just like any protective layer, ceramic coatings require regular care to perform effectively. He shares personal anecdotes and industry insights, arguing against misleading marketing claims that suggest coatings are 'set it and forget it.' Joe also discusses his own product line, designed to make maintenance easier and more effective, while advocating for transparency in the detailing industry.
Is your ceramic coating failing? The #1 reason isn't the product—it's the maintenance. Today I'm exposing the biggest ceramic coating lies and showing you how to fix a clogged coating using Tough as Shell.
The industry wants you to believe coatings are "set it and forget it," but that's the fastest way to ruin your paint. We're breaking down the system I use to keep my cars looking brand new without the 8-hour weekend struggle.
In this episode, we dive into the reality of car detailing in 2026. From "permanent" coatings to the myth of scratch-proof paint, I'm showing you the system that actually works for daily drivers.
"...if you make maintenance products that are equally as hard to apply as your ceramic coating, no one's going to want to use your maintenance products. It runs me a ceramic pro sport way back in the day."
Ceramic coating is a special liquid that you put on a car's paint to protect it from dirt and sun damage. It makes the car look shiny and helps keep it clean.
Ceramic coating is a liquid polymer applied to the exterior of a vehicle that chemically bonds with the factory paint, providing a protective layer against environmental contaminants and UV damage. It enhances the vehicle's appearance and makes it easier to clean.
"I could tell you everything about it as far as solid percentage and why that solid percentage is ideal..."
Solid percentage means how much of the coating is actual material that protects the car, compared to the liquid part that helps it spread. More solid material usually means better protection.
The solid percentage in a ceramic coating refers to the amount of solid material in the product compared to solvents. A higher solid percentage often indicates better durability and protection.
"...if you have a soap that is just pH neutral and just foams and there's lubricious, uh, it's not cleaning anything."
pH neutral means the cleaning product is not too acidic or too basic, which helps protect your car's paint. It’s safe to use without worrying about damaging the surface.
pH neutral refers to a balanced acidity level in cleaning products, typically around 7 on the pH scale. This means the product won't damage or alter the surface it's used on, making it safe for car finishes.
"...if it's going to etch through your clear coat, and then you're going to have to re coat that or repaint that panel because you have that sacrificial layer that is your extra insurance..."
Clear coat is the shiny, see-through layer on top of a car's paint that helps protect it from scratches and makes it look nice. If it gets damaged, the car can lose its shine.
Clear coat is a transparent layer of paint applied over the base color of a vehicle to protect it from scratches, UV rays, and environmental damage. It enhances the gloss and depth of the paint underneath.
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Hi, this is Joe from Vanta.
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There's really only one reason it comes down to one reason why a ceramic coating fails
on a car.
And it's none of the things that people talk about in the mainstream.
It's so simple and like most things, not only in the detailing space, but in life in general,
if something is being explained to you and it's overly complicated and it's overly complex,
someone's probably lying to you, right?
And the same is true when it comes to the reason why, at least in my opinion, I will caveat
all this by saying this is strictly my opinion and my opinion when talking with the chemist
that I work with in my experience in installing probably thousands of coatings across different
cars now.
And there's just one simple reason why a coating fails.
And it's the same exact reason that a normal clear coat would start to fail on a car.
And that's, I don't know why it's so complicated or why people choose to over complicate it.
The reason why, and I'll get into it less than two minutes into this podcast and then
you could stop listening if you want.
The number one reason, in my opinion, that ceramic coatings fail.
I don't care what brand it is, who applied it, if a monkey applied it, if a blind person
applied it, it doesn't matter.
The number one reason why ceramic coatings fail is because they weren't maintenance.
That's it.
It's literally that simple.
It's so simple.
It's right in front of our face.
It's right in front of our eyes.
It makes complete sense.
It's logical.
It's the same reason why a clear coat from the factory would fail.
It's the same reason why PPF will fail.
It's the same reason why your wrap is going bad.
Well, wraps could be a little bit different because they're literally giant stickers.
But still, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.
It's the same reason why the house, the paint will fail on your house.
It's the same reason why the wood will rot on your house.
It's the same reason why your brakes go out and will eventually not stop your car anymore
if you don't maintenance them.
It's the same thing with your engine.
You have to maintenance the engine.
For some reason, when it comes to ceramic coatings, we believed these five lies too that
I pointed out.
But the biggest lie being that brands say that you don't need to maintain their coating.
It's like, first of all, that's crazy.
Second of all, it's stupid for the brand.
Why wouldn't you want to sell more product?
Why wouldn't you want to sell a topper?
Three, this is separate from my other list of five lies that were fed.
But three, who doesn't touch their car?
Who does not touch their car?
It's so weird.
But if you make maintenance products that are equally as hard to apply as your ceramic
coating, no one's going to want to use your maintenance products.
It runs me a ceramic pro sport way back in the day.
It was a stout topper, but it was really hard to apply.
And number four, what are we doing?
Why?
Saying a ceramic coating doesn't need a maintenance is the exact carbon copy predicament that
got so many detailers in trouble when ceramic coatings first came out.
And I'm guilty of this.
I'll never forget.
And it was a total learning experience for me.
I had a client and we were doing a wash and wax.
This is 10, 12 years ago.
Well, probably 13, 13 years ago, 14 doesn't matter.
We were doing a wash and a wax for 85 bucks, like once a month, right?
So if we run the loose math, if I'm doing once a month for 85 bucks, there's 12 months
in a year, right?
That was $1,000 a year for that one car from that one client, right?
I told him I was hot on ceramic coatings, wanting to install some ceramic coatings.
And I, as we used to sell ceramic coatings back in the day, you don't need much maintenance.
Wash it and you're done, right?
And so mind you, that wash and wax that I was doing for 85 bucks a month was taking me
less than an hour, right?
Because my detailing methods, you can say same as I even talk about today.
It's like, it's the reason why Tuffa Shell is so easy to apply.
It's like, you're going to wipe down the car after you wash it anyway.
You might as well wipe it down with something stout.
And that's the reason why Tuffa Shell is so easy to apply.
So you could use it often.
So you can maintenance stuff because maintenance is the name of the game.
You have to maintain your stuff.
Regardless of whatever your stuff is, you have to maintain your body.
You got to maintain your house.
You got to maintain your car's engine.
You got to maintain your car's alignment and structure.
Why would we ever believe that we don't need to maintain a product that we
put to protect the paint?
Of course you need to maintenance it.
Of course, of course, of course, it goes against logic that you wouldn't need to.
Now that's where logic and marketing kind of, you know, interject a little bit,
I guess, but of course you have to maintenance it.
So going back to my story, though, but I was hot and heavy on wanting to install
coatings and I told this customer, hey, you're spending about a thousand bucks a
year right now maintaining this car.
I can give you something better for 750 bucks, right?
And so for 750 dollars, because cars virtually brand new, I'd been maintaining it.
I just had to strip it and reapply the coating, but I was so hot and heavy on
applying the coating that I forgot business principles.
And he goes, well, how long does the coating last?
I said, oh, about five years.
And it's like, hello, let's do a little quick math here.
I'm paying a thousand dollars a year right now.
I could pay 750 for over five years, right?
Of course, the guy went for it.
Now it was my week selling, but that's how coatings were sold back in the day.
They didn't really need to do much to it.
You didn't really need to maintain it.
Last forever, set it and forget it, right?
Just to close the sale, which obviously I got the sale, but from a business
standpoint, it was a horrible deal for me because I got the one upfront chunk of
750 bucks or 800 bucks and forget exactly how much it was, but which was great
for that time, but I still went back to wash the guy's car and instead of
making 85 bucks every time because this was 12 years ago, I'd make 40 bucks.
So I'm making half as much, right?
So in the long run, that's a bad deal for me.
And that's what we see.
That's what we're just kind of seeing that regurgitate itself or reemerge itself
with these brands that say, hey, because they're trying to do it as a marketing
stunt of like my coding is so stout that you don't need to maintenance it, right?
That's that's their play.
And on the surface, it seems like, oh, OK, yeah, don't need to maintenance it.
Of course, I'll do that.
Similar to my client of like, well, yeah, for 800 bucks or 750 bucks, it's a one
time hit, but he says it lasts for five years.
I probably won't even have this car in five years and, you know, instead of
spending $5,000, I'll spend $750 or $800, right?
That sounds pretty good to me.
Of course, it sounds good to him, right?
Of course, he went for it and the same is true today.
Of course, if you if a coding says, hey, you don't need to maintenance it and
it's the same price of a coding that you do need to maintenance.
Well, of course, it sounds better to go with the one that you don't need to
maintenance, but is that true?
Is that true?
And that is the problem that we run into is that it's not true.
You do need to maintenance it just like you need to maintenance everything else.
And this is what becomes the core problem and the thing that I'm trying to
combat and I finally, you know, beating a dead horse at this point, but it bears
repeating that this is why I finally started my own brand.
I have done podcast after podcast and video after video saying, hey, I never
and this is 100% true.
I never wanted to start my own brand.
I never did.
I actually love private labeling.
It's a lot of fun.
It's the money is actually better, you know, it's a lot of fun.
But the problem became that brands don't want to listen.
They actually don't want the latest and greatest.
They don't and the industry sells false expectations, right?
And that's what people are comfortable with.
And just like with there's so many parallels with detailers and product
brands and just like it with detailers, everyone copies each other and whether
they know it works or doesn't work, right?
And so they just copy each other, silhouette, logo, whatever, go down the
laundry list of things that are all the same.
And what happens is everyone kind of ends up looking all the same and then
people complain of like, well, how come, you know, how come my business
is going down or I can't get new clients or, you know, oh, there's a bunch
of cheap detailers that have popped up and it's killing my margin.
And it's like, no, the problem is, is that, you know, there's nothing
different about you.
And so what starts to happen on the product brand side, though, is that
because everyone kind of looks the same, people start selling false expectations.
And this is just one example of that of like, hey, you don't need to
surround, you don't need to maintenance your ceramic coating, right?
The problem is you do need to maintenance it.
And the, the, what it becomes is that you have set false expectations and then
you're setting your brand up for failure because everything in life needs
maintenance, everything in life needs to be maintained.
And I think instead of saying, Hey, our coating never needs to be maintained.
What I do, and this is where having my own brand gave me the opportunity
to have a voice and to be a little bit different is to say, Hey,
everything in life needs to be maintained.
I have a ceramic coating called the gloss boss.
It is a very stout coating.
It's, you know, packed to the brim.
I could tell you everything about it as far as solid percentage and why
that solid percentage is ideal, how we use, you know, proper solvents.
And so you could actually apply it to a whole half of a side of a car.
It has about a 30 minute work time, which is unheard of in the ceramic
coating space.
It's unheard of because no one's been able to figure out how to do that.
Yes, a 30 minute flash time.
So it's like impossible to mess up.
I could give you, you know, all the technical data on that.
But at the end of the day, it still needs to be maintained.
And so what I decided to do was make maintenance products that are just as
dummy proof as the ceramic coating itself, so that it's not laborious to maintain it.
Right.
And so if you've already spent a ton of time and energy and effort applying
a coating, um, you don't want to spend equal amount of time to, uh, reapply it
or to boost it or whatever.
And so that's why my products like the super sober, clean up, ceramic
coated car really well, tough as shell applies like a quick detail spray, but
it's stout like a ceramic spray coating.
Like it shouldn't be a chore to maintenance your coating.
Right.
And so, yes, man, there's so much to say.
And I get so frustrated and I get so, um, you know, like, why, why, why, why
do brands do this?
And this is why this is what brought me out of behind the scenes into the, uh, the,
the front of it all because I got tired of seeing this.
And I'm like, why is it, I'd sell a brand of coating, then they start selling it.
You know, Hey, it's got 99% solids.
And I'm like, dude, I told you it doesn't have 99% solids.
Like it has 70% solids because that's the ideal number, something with 99%
solids actually doesn't even make sense from a chemistry standpoint.
Why are you selling it like that?
You know, why are you selling it that there's no maintenance needed?
I told you it had to be maintenance.
Right.
Don't sell it as it protects against everything because that's wrong.
This, you know, invincible protection, right?
It protects everything, which it doesn't.
Sol UV, there's, there's an array of elements that cars are exposed to.
And it doesn't block everything.
Yeah.
So it's the, the gloss boss, tough as shell, the easiest ceramic coating to apply
ever, right?
Like I said, I apply it to a whole half of a car before I start to level.
Okay.
People freak out about that, right?
Cause they're not used to that, but made it easy.
Right.
I'd see brands say, Hey, you never have to wash your car.
It's self-cleaning, which people think self-cleaning means the car never gets dirty.
But the problem is the car does get dirty.
You do have to wash it.
Um, you have to clear off that residue that is trying to penetrate the coating.
Right.
But again, if you have a soap that is just pH neutral and just foams and
there's lubricious, uh, it's not cleaning anything.
It's just making it slicker for when you glide the wash them in across the surface.
So it's like, you know, uh, how about we make a soap that actually cleans the surface?
Imagine that a ceramic maintenance spray that actually is easy to apply and you
want to apply it, right?
Because here's the thing too, it makes that coating that's rated at three years,
five years, 10 years, whatever you want to call it, it'll make that
coating virtually last forever because you're maintaining it.
So that whatever coding you are applying and makes that coating the best coding in
the world, because you're actually maintaining the coding, you're adding a
sacrificial layer on top of a sacrificial layer.
And so the coding becomes like I sell it to my clients.
That is your insurance policy on your car.
It's not invincible.
It doesn't last forever.
It doesn't make it so you never have to wash the car.
It's not resistant to water spots and there is no year warranty.
Okay.
So I go complete opposite of the industry standard because I say, Hey, you
need to maintain your car, but when you do maintain your car, it'll look brand
new every time you wash it.
And guess what?
You won't have to worry about when a bird poops on your car, if it's going to
etch through your clear coat, and then you're going to have to re coat that or
repaint that panel because you have that sacrificial layer that is your extra
insurance, right?
And also if you want your car looking good all the time, a ceramic coating is
the best way to do it, right?
You want a car that looks good all the time.
A ceramic coating is the best way to do it, but you do have to maintenance it.
But here's the caveat.
When we maintenance it, let's make it as easy as possible because
a ceramic coating quote unquote could be self cleaning with the right tools, right?
So with the right system, with the right tools, it could be very, very easy to
maintain and that's kind of the stance I take with the Jimbo's detailing brand
is, Hey, let's make it easy to maintain.
Let's make it easy to get back to that, you know, just detailed look without
over complicating things, without making it difficult, without false pretenses,
without, you know, without any of that, let's do it differently, right?
So anyway, I think easy beats permanent every single time in the real world.
So I want real world customers, right?
And again, this I never wanted to start my own brand, but I got tired of this,
like call it the fine print, call it the marketing, call it whatever you want to
call it, it's really just the BS of the industry, right?
It's the it's a brand taking a lazy marketing stance to try to stand out.
That's really what it comes out to, or just copying what other brands do,
which I like, I totally resonate with as well because it's the easier route to go.
It's easier to talk about it and to say words.
And it feels like you're in line with everyone else and you're in line
with industry standards.
It's much harder to take a stance against it because people think you're crazy,
right? People think you're crazy until something bad happens.
And then all of a sudden you're the genius, right?
And everyone's flooding you and calling you asking for your opinion.
And so I, for the Jimbo's detailing brand, my philosophy is to be honest,
transparent and give the best products that I could possibly make to make things
as easy as possible to get the absolute best result.
That is my kind of philosophy, my brand philosophy, I guess.
And so on top of that, it's fast shipping, incredible customer service,
kind of all the behind the scenes things that you don't see unless you become
a customer. I am ferocious about my customer service.
I answer every email, every call, everything in general,
because I think that is also part of the brand.
It's not just the liquid in the bottle.
It's every single touch point along the way.
So the, the emails that you get after you order the, the tons of communication,
how to get the best out of the products and everything in between.
I try to be the resource for all of that on top of having the best products
that need to be maintained.
You, if you apply the gloss boss, you have to maintain it.
Have to guess what?
If you apply tough a shell, you have to maintain it.
So I recorded this podcast separately.
I'm also going to be recording a first person YouTube video on this
same subject on my car that ironically enough, some of it is ceramic coated.
Some of it just has tough a shell on it.
And so if you want to see that video, you can hop over onto my YouTube channel.
But if you want any of the products that I've been talking about,
or if this resonates with you and aligns with you and you want to support
a brand that aligns with kind of the values that you believe into.
And that makes a lot of sense.
Invite you over to Jimbo's detailing.com.
I also have everything up over on Amazon.
It just makes it more convenient for those of you that want to take
advantage of prime shipping.
I take a little bit of a hit, but it's convenience for you.
And again, kind of walking along the same line as my brand philosophy.
I'm all about the customer service.
I'm all about the experience.
And so if you get a better experience shopping on Amazon,
you will miss some of the things that you get when you buy direct.
But again, it's there for convenience because some people value convenience
over everything.
So I will link both stores below.
Thanks for listening to my 20 minute rant.
If you stick around this long, I appreciate you.
Use code podcast at Jimbo's detailing.com and it'll give you a little
percentage off, a little discount, a little surprise gift for you.
So thanks for listening.
Maintain your ceramic coating.
Dang it.
Catch you on the next one.
See ya.
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