Changing The Industry Podcast

The cool thing about Jade is that

Jade has a different subset of experience,

right. And so she worked in the medical field, and she

worked in a vet's office. So things where people are,

like, super emotional and upset don't face her. And she's

just like, but your car's broken. This is how much it costs to fix

it. Here you that's that's actually we've had a couple of

criers work for.

If. The customer got upset, they got upset. Did you know David's

a closet crier? I can see that, but

I'm a closet crier. I get in the closet and cry.

Why did I open a shop? This is such a bad idea. What the hell

was I thinking? I think that that's mandatory, isn't it? Yes. The cry in the

closet. Yeah. I don't know. So we had a

conversation a while. Back, introduce

Ashley Jo and Jeremy Bloom from I don't know

where. Oregon. I know Oregon. That's it. Astoria, Oregon.

Astoria, Oregon. I thought it was Bord,

Oregon. Bored Oregon. Well, I'm from Boring,

so maybe that's. Where you're getting that's. What?

Itville?

Tennessee Wattville. It's whiteville. No, it is,

but you call it wobble whiteville.

God almighty. You need some redneck training.

We're talking about service advisors.

What about them? I'm trying

to put context to the story. We're talking about service advisors,

and he was asking, should you hire a service advisor that

has experience, or should you hire someone that doesn't?

Depends on what you're looking for, basically. Should you promote from within? Do

you try and make a service writer or do you try and find

somebody? Because they're kind of tough to find, but backstory. We've done all

three. Have any of them worked?

Loretta's been with us on and off. Yeah,

right. Loretta has been with us on and off for eight years. This is the

first time that she's been with us full time for very long. But in the

past, the people that we've hired that were service riders were like

they did not fit our company at all. They were like car

salesmen. Didn't have the small town feel, didn't

have any empathy. They were just kind of terrible. And then the

people that we who was it? Oh, Tim. We promoted Tim from within,

and he was actually pretty good at it, but he had some home stuff going

on, so that didn't work out. The thing is that

it's a very unique skill set, and so bringing

somebody from back of house, usually they

don't have the skill set that makes them good

at that because they're two different types of people. They're two different types of

skills. Now, they might be a great estimator and be able to do that. They

might be able to throw the estimate together, get the estimate right, and the whole

nine yards. But being able to communicate what a car needs to a client,

that's why service advisors were around in the first place. Right. Is because the

technicians weren't necessarily that good at it. So I hated all of

that and decided that I wasn't going to have a service advisor.

And so that's what we did. We got rid of that whole

concept of calling and presenting. We don't do

that at all. What do you do? We just send them the

estimate and. You just go from there. They get a

DVI. You set the stage up

front. Hey, I'm just going to let you know we're going to inspect your vehicle.

We look at the entire vehicle just so we get a game plan

the vehicle needs. We do it with every single vehicle that comes in the door.

You're not special. Okay, give the

keys. Then they get a text alert. Hey, your car has been checked in. We'll

let you know when we start the inspection process. Then they get another one saying,

hey, the car is being inspected. Put the cap on that.

The car is being inspected. We write up the

inspection, lots of pictures

and brief notes. Turns out his technicians

write dissertations on the notes and they're so

long they've written them and then have

them ready to copy and paste into the inspection to write

a book, essentially, about everything they need on this particular vehicle. Are

there footnotes? What's that? Are there footnotes? I'm

sure there are footnotes like the main. And then they

get so we recommend

service or fluid needs to be serviced. You keep it brief because

it turns out nobody reads the notes. They just look at the

picture and the picture says, it's red. That's it. I

really hope nobody listens to him. And from my experiences, they don't.

Right. They skip past his voice. They can do that all they want, but I'm

just telling you right now, aros

were within dollars of each other and I did

no calling and presenting. We don't call them

present. Really? Hang on, I have to say this.

I had to knock on wood because. I'm

my arrow so far this year is flat. That's not what I'm

talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just hoping that

neither one of us gets sued. So I have to prove that the notes on

my repair order keep me out of trouble. Better than the notes on your repair

order. I'm not you out of trouble

if you're doing a state inspection, fine, put them in there on the state

inspection. But it is asinine to

put a 45 word

note into this box here. The customer is not going to read

about the need for cleaning off the

oil that may cause a fire. I don't know what you're

putting in there because I guarantee you there is no amount

of notetaking that is going to completely absolve you of all

liability. Of course not. Well, then what's the point?

What is the point? Say, well, I'm not going to get sued for if it

catches on fire, but if it goes careening into a ditch. I

forgot to put that note in because I hadn't thought of that, and I hadn't

had a lawyer review it. So what am I going to do? You just

carry really good general liability insurance, dear. That's what you do.

Anyway, I'm right? Is that why you price shop it? I do

not price shop it. I've been with my insurance guy for forever, okay? He's not

very good either. He's a nice guy. He's a sweet guy.

He's a customer. So you kind of like you're stuck. Anyway, so I have a

question. When the customer calls and says, hey, I want to talk to somebody about

this quote, you just say, Look, I sent you a picture. Yes, that's exactly

what I don't say, like that. I don't say like

that. Did you look at the picture? Yes,

you're right. I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know what I'm looking

at. I'm saying, okay, well, shit is broken. See this? What, you want to

park the circle that's broken? They're like,

okay, yeah, it's not supposed to be like that.

Anyway, it's 268 99 to fix it. And they're like, oh,

okay, well, go ahead and do it. No,

I need you to click it on the app. Okay.

Yeah, we'll wait for you. You can do it now if you want. Okay. Make

sure you sign the bottom. All right, thank you. Hey, by the

way, I'm going to need parts money. That's what we

do. That is what we do.

What? You act like it's weird. Here's the thing.

I have a track record. It

turns out that all of the

sales training is unnecessary. Maybe just at

my shop, but I don't know, maybe it's at every

shop, and all of it is just fluff.

Not Cecil's classes. They're great.

So when I ask you, like, what are you looking for? Is if you're looking

for somebody to sell, I need this close rate

because there's some shops that like right, right.

You don't get mad at me. I'm not disparaging you in any

way. Was I mean to him? I can't mad at

you. He's an idiot.

I just don't want to say something mean to you now, because all I

can think of is, god, this dude's an idiot. You can say that, but I've

got proof. I've got hard numbers. It works.

I don't have to call and sell anything. No, officer, he's trying

to sell me something I don't need. So dude, I sent you pictures and an

estimate. You can hit no

at any point. You can hit no. So what are we doing here?

I'm not upselling a thing like your boy over here, the

Canadian guy. I'm not upselling a thing. I don't upsell.

Oh, that was an interesting article, wasn't it?

Anyway, so if you're looking to hire somebody

that wants to sell, that's a very specific skill set.

And that's what you want is I want this close rate

in this much work estimated on average in this close

rate, and I will find the cars. So I'm going to bring in 50

cars. Every car needs to have $4,000

estimated on average, and I expect a 60%

close rate or a 40% close, whatever the number happens to be. If that's

your business model, then you're going to hire a very specific type of person,

and that person's got to hit that close rate, and the aro is going to

be what it is. But as long as the numbers all work out, it's going

to be cecil. Says I should just hire a shop manager. I shouldn't hire

a service. That's what that's

the route. I mean, we don't call everybody's

a manager because they're all on salary, and technically they're all managers. They

are managing things, just not

people necessarily, but they have things they have to

manage

for the Department of labor. That much you're not so sure.

What was the discussion we had at lunch today?

What did I say that I didn't. Say that

I didn't want to name anyone. I don't know what he's talking about

anyway. So they're all managing

stuff anyway. I need a person

that can check in the vehicles and can,

without any hesitation ask for

money without having fixed the thing. Specific skill

set that is jade would. Be legit at

it. She would be really good at and be like, hey, so thanks for

the approvals because I love that green, green, one

red or one black, I guess it's black, isn't it? Yeah, green, green, green,

one black. I love that. And then you dump it all

into the ro, and it pops up $3,800. And then he

gets on the phone and he's like, hey, I appreciate the approvals. I'm going to

need $2,200 down to get started. You

want to go ahead and take care of that now? And that's it. And he

does it like he doesn't care where I would be like,

don't change your mind. Why are you service Advisor was going to

be so good. Just like,

here's what happened with the other Service Advisor. I kind of

feel like that's actually somewhat common with owners, though, from what I've seen,

is I'm good at dealing with customers. I'm not the best

service writer because I have a leading heart and I have too

much invested. I can't say, Here, here's your bill. Take it

or leave it. Yeah, 100% emotional. Too emotional,

exactly. Well, Quantum, he

feels bad. No, he doesn't. He does

callous. Like, he's not of course not Kurt or anything like that.

He is invested in it, but for him, it's

just a checkbox. Did I check it off? Yes or no? And

then he moves on with his day. There'll be another car. There'll be another

car. He does not put emotional weight on that

discussion. I see. Oh, we didn't get that sale. My business

is going to fail. Tomorrow, and

I'm going to have to go back to work somewhere. This is all Lucas.

Can I have a job? No, I'm broke, too.

Yeah. So you need to decide

if that's the person you want to just hey. I'm just

envisioning the conversation that's going to happen after Cecil listens

to this episode. I'm going to set him off. He's not going to like it.

But here's the thing. I have found that

presenting things, the customers don't understand anything

you're saying to them, like sway bar, leaks are worn out,

struts are leaking, tires are unevenly worn.

You're going to need an alignment. Looks like your oil cooler is looking too. So

to take care of all that, it's going to be $2,400, $68. Would you like

me to take care of that for you today?

I don't know what you're saying. That whole process

there, that whole process, I think it feels icky to

me. I've had to do it. I don't like doing it.

And I found, turns out entirely

unnecessary because this may have

been necessary ten years ago, 20 years ago,

30 years ago, for forever and backwards.

The consumer is different now. I can see that. I can

agree with that. It comes in waves for us. We'll have, like,

all summer. We didn't even hardly talk to anybody in the phone. We just

sent stuff. They approved it. It was great.

But now we've kind of switched back to people who want to come in and

talk about it. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. Inspection

and look at the picture. Call. And they want to have that conversation anyway, they

call us, and they're like, I don't know what this is. Tell me. And then

they're like, I still don't know what it is. Is a $3,800 bill, sir?

Yeah, you want to go ahead and take care of that? Now, here's the thing.

I think that right now we've seen some change, right? We've seen a

little bit of development in that area where people maybe they

feel a little more pressure, so they want to know a little bit more about

what's going on, and they want to know that they're doing the right thing for

their car. We've got clients, and this is really up to

them on how much engagement they have with us. We've got clients that

just want it texted and emailed to them, and they just deal with it. And

then we've got clients who want to talk to somebody, right? And I've got a

lot of clients who that is how our brand was built is that

I'm counseling them on what's going on with the car. And that's why I call

them service advisors, because it's our job to advocate and advise them,

right? For me, I spend a good bit of time

like, if I'm in the shop, I spend a good bit of time developing an

estimate in such a way that it's like, hey, this is Lucas's List. And so

it has L's on it with a little Apostrophe or something that

indicates, hey, this is us. And this is the things that

if it was my car, my wife's car, this is what we'd be doing. That's

a good idea. This is why I do this, right? So I'll take a few

minutes and I'll go over and these are the things that are important to me

as a professional. And it would be something, something I do on those vehicles

that are mine to make sure it stays safe and reliable. These are things I

just want you to know about. They may come up down the road. This is

not something I'm worried about right this minute, but this is my way of showing

you and educating you about your car. How is it when I envision

that I see an L with a heart around it? Oh, that's a good idea.

None of what he just gammared on about is scalable.

It's not scalable. It's got to have Lucas on it. And if Lucas isn't

there, didn't we. Decide early we aren't going to scale our businesses? You just said

the other day, scalable. In the sense that dude we just had in

here is doing 90% of the work that isn't like

actual wrenching. He's doing the diagnostic work, he's doing the service

advising, he's checking in the cars, he's calling the customers, he's selling the work

like, holy crap, how do you have time to do anything else

that's your entire day? Yeah. And he's like, oh, I stopped working at

five. I used to work all day long. It's like, well, yeah, I get it,

but if you need to take yourself out of the business and

say, I don't know, go on vacation or hey, we got to go record a

podcast in Utah, who's going to do this? Lucas's list

with Lucas, isn't there? It doesn't make any sense at that point. But the thing

is, I've got a team that's able to do that without me. Yeah, it's called

green, yellow, red. Hey, just letting you know if it's. In

yellow, if there's 25 reds. If it's 25 reds,

it's 25 reds. Last time I looked at your car, it was like,

shit, man, my car. My car is in great shape. What are you talking

about? Do you ever get the big dent in the back of it?

We have to go eat. But he doesn't realize we've got another 45 minutes to

go anyway. I'm going to get a podcast

episode out of this thing. It.

So what were you saying? I'm saying that

it's not scalable to do something that intimate

and so you have to do something a little bit different. You use the green,

yellow, red system because it's in there. Right. Makes sense to use

it. Why can your technician not say,

hey, here's the things that if this was my car, I'd be really focused

on. You put that in as the philosophy

in part of the inspection process. I like that.

Well, that's what you do up front. Everybody understands, like, hey, what does yellow and

what does red mean? Don't just make it all red. It's like,

hey, can this weight they make it yellow.

If I have to come out and ask, I'm mad. Hey, can this

weight yeah, mark around it.

Trick question. Every single time it's a trick question.

They don't know it. They will now. They listen to the podcast in the

shop. Then they get mad at me of things. I

say, how are you mad at me?

Which one? Episode 32. I don't remember what the hell

I said. In episode 32. He says some pretty nasty things about your

people. Nasty? No, I love my people. You kidding me?

That's his way of showing love. It really is.

That's his words of endearment, right?

That's his love language is hate. I don't know how that

works, but it does. It's fairly effective. Do you guys

require a phone call to the customer? Yeah, we typically do. I

like, oh, no, we don't. We just send it. And if the

customer doesn't call by the next day, then we call them. I have

never had more I don't have a call anymore than when I do that.

If I just send it, people get. So because you're not telling

them up front. It's up and down, though. Sometimes people are like, yeah, I

saw it, I'll get back to you. I don't know,

but remember Adam Rath? Adam Rath's like, hey, listen,

if they've not approved in an hour, we're calling them like, hey,

what's going on? Hey, what's going on? Typically, if they're not

so it's not an hour for us. It's usually like two to 3

hours. If we don't see approvals coming in two to 3 hours, they don't have

the money for it. They don't have the money for it. That's legit. Yeah,

for sure. And so you see what you do? What shop management

system do you guys use? Tech metric? Oh, man, sorry, you

guys. Anyway, so we have the ability to. See we still love you.

Yeah, we'll just edit that out

just for next time you say, I'd rather not say and we move on. That's

what you do. You know what you should do every. Time

you ask it? You should have your finger on the button.

Shopware. What shop management do you say?

Shopware. That's a

good idea. So on

the subject of the DBI and all that, though, how often do you guys run

into issues with somebody brings their car in for an oil change, new customer

never seen before, they bring it in for an oil change. Okay, so we do

a full inspection on it, present all the problems to them.

And they're like, I brought this in for an oil change and you're telling me

I need $3,000 worth of work and they're pissed off about it and think you're

just trying to three to. 5%, depending on what

we're working on. Would you shut up and let somebody else talk?

No, you're wrong. Three to 5%. And the

three to 5% is only at one point in time, and that is when the

advisor did not tell them this was going to happen.

When the advisor doesn't tell you, hey, I'm going to look over the vehicle. Would

you like me to make you aware of any safety or reliability concerns we see

with automobile and anybody in their right mind? What are they going to

say? Yes. No, hang

on, hold on. On our digital inspection, we have

courtesy clean and vacuum that people can approve. We have the courtesy inspection and we

have quality check. In the last month, I would say at least 30 or

40% of people have declined all three of those, including the

quality check. Well, here's the thing. All of those

are automatically on my tickets. Automatically on the tickets. And

so when I tell them that, if they say no,

I don't want you to alert me to any safety concerns. What do I know

about this client now? Yeah,

I've got a wolf in the shop. I need to be careful with this one.

Right. We don't ask the lady with the airbag

story. That's the whole way I knew she's like, I

don't want to know if there's anything wrong with the safety systems in my car.

I don't care about any of that. Then why was she fixing the airbag? Because

she wanted the light off. We don't ask.

We just tell them, hey, if they don't want me to inspect,

I want you to inspect my vehicle. I'm sorry. We inspect every vehicle.

We do, too. Yeah. It's a liability thing, for sure. Plus a

CYA thing, of course. Well, here's the thing, though. Is that the only

reason because I'm still going to do it. The only reason I ask is because

I'm trying to find out what kind of client I'm working with. Yeah, but

I don't know. I still want to inspect the vehicle. You're still

going to do it? So it really doesn't matter that you asked. You're still going

to do it. I still want to present it to them or send it to

them so they can see the vehicle and they can just decline the work. And

if they call and said, sir, ma'am, you can just

decline all the work. We just need to let you

know what's going on with the vehicle. Yeah. I have a professional responsibility to alert

you to the condition of your automobile. That's my job. That's what I do.

Now, one of the things about

especially if you've got a newer vehicle and I pull

that car in, we'll run a lighter evaluation on a 21

22, right. If it's below 50,000 miles and it's a 21

22, we'll run a little bit lighter evaluation and it still checks everything.

All of the safety stuff, all of. The what do you mean by lighter? Well,

I mean, my typical peace of mind is over an hour. It's

because of the books you guys are writing and the way you guys are taking

pictures. It's goofy. I don't do it. I know you don't do it.

Yeah, I did try to talk to Eric got butthurt. I'm just saying, like,

change it up. It's weird, but the whole, like, I can't send the

DVI and the estimate separate thing, like, we got to get that hashed out. I

can't switch the set. I'm going to have to figure something out. It's going to

be an issue. Of all the things you call weird, that's weird. I

have to be able to send the DVI first. Can you guys send the

DVI first on its own? They check the

DVI, and then you follow up with the estimate. No. Well, you can

send it separately, and then if the estimate is written already, they'll see

that. We don't want that, though. You send it the DVI

before you have the estimate written. The minute

we have the DVI, we clean it up. We send it. Yeah. So that way

you can have them scared. So they're like, I see all these red. They

see it, but they begin to think about, hey, this is what I need to

do. They'll do a little bit of research on their own. They'll have some ideas,

and so then they come back, and they've already made the decision to approve it.

So then when they get the actual estimate, it's not that big of a deal

because it's like, I've already made up my mind. I really think I need to

do this. They've already put the money in their head. Right. Instead, when they look

at the estimate, when they open it and they see the estimate and that's what

they see with it, it's like, oh, my God, I don't have that kind of

money. Right? They didn't have the chance to have a non emotional response to

it. They open it up, and they see

the dollar amount. They don't look at all the reds. They just see

the dollar amount, and they're like, whoa, where are you coming at me with $3,000

for? Did you see all the reds? No, I saw $3,000.

Well, you have to send the DVI. They have to look at it first,

which is why we have it separated. Although we were

looking at he started floating or trial

running, mushing it all together, just into shopware. Not having the

two separate systems, I. Was trying to expedite it for the service.

We one of the things that we're running into is it's taking too long to

process. Right? And when we're in a bigger shouts. It'S your

notes and the way you take your goofy push. Dude, it can't be the

notes. The notes don't take me any time. It takes Eric time. Poor

Eric. He's the only one that does that. What does Terry do?

Terry writes common sense notes that are just pretty basic, kind of what your

guys put. Okay. That's why Eric got hurt,

because you're a douchebag picking on one person who's doing it. Okay.

How big are your notes? I

don't know. They're pretty short for the most part. For the inspection? Yeah.

I make them write pretty detailed notes on the diagnostic

anymore, though. And it's funny because now we look back on things, like,

two years ago, and we're like, the fuck are we looking at here? There's

no information here. Well, that's what we run into, is like,

hey, if it comes back or if it goes to another shop,

I want them to be able to look that and say, yeah, so we write.

It for other shops. That's exactly right. But that's different now. That's not an

inspection. If they're paying me for diag,

I. Want to book we have inspections for the diagnostics,

so, like, there'll be a drive test inspection. There's inspections for

tear downs and stuff, so that stuff's all saved as a separate inspection in

our system. And I do typically write books for that anymore, because, like she said,

I'll go back and I'll look at something, comes back a couple of years later,

and I look at it. I'm like, I don't even know why we replaced that.

There's no notes. We replaced this. I have no idea

why. Right, exactly. Dude, that's tough. We were smaller.

It was easier because there weren't so many people to try and keep straight.

I know. I still remember, though.

I still remember all of it. Yeah, I remember every it's like a

scar. It's like a broken heart. Every car.

I remember this lady came in. She was mad about this, and when we fixed

this, and then we replaced that, and then that went haywire.

Because you put emotional connection to every vehicle. It's not that. No, they just

I'm just telling you. It's like a stab

every single time a car comes in the door. I need the money.

But I'm just telling you, I hate working on cars anyway, so

shopware had integrated their DVI. They always had the

DVI, but it used to be, like, their notes section, and then you kind of

had an outline, hey, check these seven things,

right? And then you would just make notes in the notes section about the seven

things, and then that was the DVI. And then

they decided that, hey, we want to put

instead of the checklist, we want to actually put findings under

the checklist, which was everybody that would come into

Shopware would immediately ask for that. They're like, Why can't I have that

there? It's like, okay,

whatever. And so they did. They made it like

that. And it looks really good on the customer side.

It looks really slick. It makes sense. It flows

nice. It's a nice presentation. Which, again, eliminates the

need for the phone call. But the problem now

is, like, hey, I need them to look at the DVI, and then I need

to be able to send an estimate after they see the DVI.

They need to be able to see the DVI. I'm

99.99% sure that's one of the coming

things, right? The ability to turn off the estimate on

and off. Right. So that could be turned off. They can't see that while you're

building it, and then you can turn it on. That'll

fix everything. Yeah. I hope that it's not

like, toggled separately so you can toggle it all in one spot.

I hope they don't do that. And it's an on off button, like

Hide don't Hide, or Hide and Reveal. Anyway,

so I've got a question. Yes. We had a

long, tough conversation a while back about a situation

in your shop. Tell us a story.

So at what point was I out with that person? He's no longer

with us. So that's where you were at the point of tears and

not to know what to do because you didn't know if you should

keep him, if you should send him, if you should try and fix it. Well,

I should have let him go then. The phone call should have been enough of

a clue that it was time to just let him go, but I didn't.

Well, tell the whole story. Tell

how we got here. Okay, well, let me start at the beginning then. All right,

so a year ago last month, this guy came to us as a Eurotech, which

is super hard to find in my area. There are none, right?

And we made him a job offer. He used it to get a better wage

at his current place. Fine, whatever. We

were pissed about it, but we were like, Whatever. In July,

he rolls into the parking lot with his toolbox, and he's like, I'm here to

work. And at the time, we were fully staffed, so we're like,

all right, I guess we'll make this work. You can just do diag because I

don't have a lift for you. So we brought him on, and I think it

was a week or two later. Was it a week or two later when he's

like, hey, I need to take some time off to get sober?

He had apparently been drinking at work. He told us that that was

acceptable at his previous job. And so he took a couple of weeks off,

came back, and was with us from

early August until right after Bimmers. When he walked

out again, he told me that I didn't know anything,

and I didn't know anything because I wasn't in the shop anymore and I needed

to go out into the shop and work on cars, and then he would respect

me. And then after Thanksgiving, he

asked for his job back, said that his wife left him, and he was just

in a really bad place, and he really missed us. And my bleeding

heart was like, all right, you can come back.

So early December, he came back, and then I think that we had our phone

call in March. Or was it like February? I think it was March.

And David, are you looking at him. Going, why

you let this go on? I'm laying no. He

told me no the second time. But by the time

bad things were in the shop, I knew shop morale was sucky. I didn't know

why. We live in a super gray area. People get seasonal depression. They talk about

it all the time. I didn't know that he was the cause of

the really bad morale. I didn't know until the person that I brought

to Vision that moved out here from Maine put it on paper in his

resignation. And shortly

before that, another technician quit. And he's like, I can't

work with this guy.

He had some stuff going on. So we weren't sure if it was just,

like a maturity thing or if it was, like, actually how old was

he? The one that quit because of it? No.

The one that had already quit. Not the resignation letter.

I think he's 24. Okay, so Young kind of got

stuff going on at home. He had already worked for us once

before, and when he quit, it was comical. I don't want to call

him out or anything, so I'm not going to do anything identifying. But we

weren't sure if it was, like, overreaction and maturity or if it was something

really going on. But then we got this letter from the guy that we took

to Vision, and we were like, all right, this is

a real bad situation. The one that

no longer works for us. He had told the service rider

in the office to get in a car and to back it out into a

spot in the parking lot. I'm like jumping around. Sorry, there's a

lot. And he didn't adequately explain to her

that the brake pedal was not in the car, and she didn't have the foresight

to look down and see that there was no physical brake pedal. So she turned

the car and hit another car in the parking lot, which caused an insurance

claim. They asked him for a drug test, which he failed,

and then he passed clean in two weeks. But then he failed the

retest because they came to talk to me about renewal, and they were surprised

that he still worked there. And so we had to retest him, and he failed

that one. And instead of waiting to see what came back, which

eventually came back clean, the second time, he blew my phone up. Blew

his phone up and resigned. And

I had already told him he couldn't come back. He was

emailing me. He was like, texting me at, like, ten at night, eleven at

night, five in the morning, talking crap about all the employees, talking

about how they didn't deserve to be there, talking about how we'd be so much

better off without all of them. After he

quit, I contacted these, like,

six people, I think, that left in the time period that he was

there. You lost six people

over this one tech? No. How much

time? A year? No, not a year? No.

Between August and March, 6 people? Six

technicians? Not all technicians. What? Not all

technicians. Some of them were office. Oh, yeah, some of them were office people. You

just lost six people? Yeah, some of them weren't there very.

Long, but still six people. Right.

All of them identified him as the cause, a big part of why they

left, specifically him. So

I reached out to a couple of the interns that we had over the summer

that didn't end up staying on, and I said, hey, I want to let you

know I'm sorry. I didn't know what was going on. Nobody

told me directly, and I didn't see it. I wasn't in the shop enough to

see the things that were going on. Sure. That takes some serious guts to do

that. So kudos for doing that. And that had to hurt, right? Yeah,

that had to suck.

We sit in here and we listen to that panel yesterday, and we hear how

frustrated the technicians get with owners. But I don't think that many

technicians realize this is not uncommon. It's not

uncommon. No. This happens to shop owners quite a bit. It's happened to

me in the shop. Who's the shop

manager? Who's doing the

front work? Who's doing the back work? You're a technician technically, right?

Yeah, technically. I do a lot of diagnostics. He's working more in a foreman

role than he does diagnostics, but he supports

the technicians more than expedites. Make sure they have the right parts. Make sure they

don't get I can't get anything done. Every time I walk through the shop, it's,

hey, come here. Hey, come here. Okay,

so you're in the back making sure the technicians are

and then you were in the front

and not in the front anymore? I'm in the front, yeah. Okay.

I actually didn't realize until after he left that I was actively

avoiding going into the shop. Yeah. I was,

like, a week or two after he was gone, and we've had how many

people came back? Two people came back. One might come back

after he left. And I didn't realize that I had been

avoiding going into the shop. Going into the shop, being at the shop, I was

pretty miserable for the last couple of months, but physically, going into the

shop and being around him, I was actively avoiding it.

In my case, I went through the same thing with the tag, and I've told

the story plenty of times. I'm not going to go back all through it, but

I went through the. Start from the beginning,

he threatened to put a hole in this, and every single time I annoyed him,

he was going to squeeze water all over me. He's going to need a bigger

bottle. Get a spray bottle. That's a good idea. Like a doll.

No cat.

But it was very much the same thing. Right. I

didn't want to go into the shop. I put my blinders on. I was trying

my best to avoid it. I thought, oh, he's a good production tech. He's getting

stuff done. A lot of what he did came back, and I

always came up with a reason that it was coming back. I never,

ever just said, look, he's just got to go. And it was really

because I think at the end of the day, the reason I held off on

it is because he was so toxic. I knew what it was going to be.

I knew he was going to flip out. I knew he was going to go

haywire. There was no doubt in my

mind. My coach was telling me, this dude's going to go

crazy. You might even want to call the sheriff's department before you fire this guy.

Right. And he did. He scared you.

No, firing scare me. It was there. Why even bring that up?

Call him and say, hey, you can't be here anymore. My point

is that it was a situation that I just wanted to

avoid. The shop wasn't actively,

in my eyes, burning down around me. It was

right. I didn't realize I was killing the culture and everything else because we were

getting workout and things were happening, but I always had a reason.

Part of it is I feel bad. Right. I hated firing people. That was really

the only person I had ever fired was this guy at that

point. And I realized that's probably the worst

experience I'll ever have, firing somebody. I don't care. I got it the rest

way, whatever. But I think that I did something

very similar. I didn't want to go in the back of the shop, and so

I disconnected from that, and it caused me to not realize

how bad it had gotten and how bad his work was and what he

was doing. Right. And it was an addiction thing, too. But listen,

this is super. He was addicted to alcohol,

was an alcoholic. Was he drunk at the shop? No, he was never drunk at

the shop. Was your guy drunk at your shop? We found out after

the afterwards that he would go out and drink at lunch. Which aligns were

they, like, red flags that you looking back, you're like,

yeah, he was drunk that day. Oh, yeah, for sure.

We got emotionally close to him. We felt bad after his

family left, we invited him over to Thanksgiving. I brought him into my home,

so it was hard to just like, all

right, we can't do this anymore.

There's a reason that programs

which offer therapy and counseling and

rehab and addiction help have

such strict rules about how they handle it, because that is a

big way to get into a situation where they can't help them anymore, is

because they are emotionally blinded by that person. That person can become

extremely manipulative. That person can become extremely controlling.

That person can say hurtful things that make you think it's almost like

narcissism, right? All of a sudden, you see this whole different side of this person

that you thought liked you and this and that. And a lot of it is

just the addiction. It's not necessarily who they are, but it can

cause you to make poor decisions when dealing with them. And you've got to be

careful getting close for that reason to somebody like. That, it

makes me feel really bad when I look back on it. And I

didn't know that he was harassing the employees the way that he was. He was

apparently messaging them after hours, harassing them as well,

like, all night. He was apparently like he'd walk by from

the stories that I've gotten from people, he'd walk by and make sideways comments while

they were doing something like a timing belt. So then we had

one guy, that man, he struggled with a subaru timing belt, and we could not

figure out why because it's just such an easy job. And we were trying to

figure out he ended up putting the tensioner in and not taking the pin out.

So it screwed everything up, right? And we were watching the video,

and we didn't realize what was happening when we were watching it.

But he would go over there and talk to this person like, every 20 minutes.

He'd swing by for a few seconds. We assumed that he was giving him

help. Afterwards, when one of our employees came back,

she was like, no, that's not what was happening at all. He would go

over there and make comments and make him feel bad, make him feel like he

shouldn't be there and couldn't do the job. And I feel super responsible because

I'm there to take care of them. These people are like my family, and I

didn't even know it was happening. Yeah, this place of

person is a monster. Holy crap. I don't think

he intentionally was a monster. I think that at some

point, we never are.

Look, I have been a monster before, right? And

you become bitter. It hurts. Things don't go the

way that you think that they go. Life's not happening like you think it

should happen. Things get hard to look in the mirror, and I

understand that. But when you're addicted to something, that's hard to

do, right? When you're addicted to something. And the problem is

that it's like if you're an alcoholic, right,

you feel bad if you don't drink, so you want to go have a

drink while you're not drinking, everything's okay, but

then you go have a drink. And all of a sudden, you start running your

mouth a little bit, and then you start to talk to yourself, and you start

telling yourself stories, and all of a sudden, that story turns into something else. And

it's like, well, that person did this. Well, and that person did that. And

you will start telling yourself stories. And all of a sudden, that logic

and that reasoning portion of your brain is no longer logic and

reasoning. It's allowing this story

you're telling yourself to get out of control. And so if

addiction goes too far, it just turns into that in a big way, and

everything in your life can become that story. Everything in your life

can be, this person did this. There are people who have

had spouses that have ended up murdering them

because they had told themselves such a story. And a lot of it, I think,

comes back to addiction. Right? Okay, so

perfect. In the mountains here,

he sends us. A picture, to my horror, of

his arm handcuffed. And I'm like, great. So that says

PNW Automotive down your shirt. So that's great, really, thanks for

representing. And he's like, I got a DUI, but I'm going to get

out of it because I just had open containers in the back. I wasn't actually

drinking. And we're like, It's not how that works.

Also, why is that in your car? Also, can you make better decisions?

And for the last four months, all

we've heard about is how he's going to get out of it. He's pushing out

the court date, hoping that the police isn't going to show up, the officer

isn't going to show up, and he's banking everything on that. He is

so solid set that he is not going to have any

repercussions. Convince the police officer was a problem. Exactly.

That everybody else 100% that he was set up, that they

came after him, and it wasn't fair, and it's not right, and it's not okay

what they did to him. Exactly. Going to go in there, and he's going to

prove that this is them that did this to him.

Right. Do you guys do debriefs when someone leaves

normally? I try to.

You lost six people in a very short amount of time. Did you do a

debrief with any of them? I think I did on two of them. Two or

three of them? Yeah. But I couldn't get no

one of the females. I couldn't get her to come back in. Maybe.

Let me explain. Are you talking to all the current employees

after the one that left leaves?

No, actually, we've never done that before.

So if you sit down with them, you find out

lots of stuff that you didn't know was going on,

and all of a sudden they're gone. And they're like, yeah, I hated that person.

They were miserable to work with. I mean, we've heard that in the

team meetings. We've heard that since then,

but we didn't sit down with them with the intention of, well, not

finding out what was going on. The problem with together is that they don't say

things in a group setting that they will tell you one on one. They

don't ever. You have to sit down with

everybody that hey, after what's his name?

We'll call him Bob. Hey. When you know,

hey, Bob's left. Anything we need

to talk about? Is everything okay? Questions,

concerns, comments? Let's talk about this. Everything's

good? I hated Bob. Okay, great.

I don't know. Yeah, we probably should do that. I mean, even though

everybody's talked to us quite a bit, they've all talked to us, like in a

group. Yeah. You might want to sit down with them, especially

after something like that. You might want to just do one on one for a

little while and just talk to them just to make sure they get some

stuff out. I feel like a lot of it like you were saying, Lucas. I

know for myself personally, everything that

went wrong, I had some kind of excuse for it, some rationalism

every single time that wasn't his fault, because we.

Thought a lot between the two of us, because I'm on the front side

going, all right. And I didn't look at his comeback rate until

after he left. In the last month that he worked for us, was it

24 cars came back? 24 cars

were comebacks. That makes our reputation look like crap. But it

was 24 out of 40 cars that he worked on. Oh, wow. So it was

like, that's disastrous. But every time that I would talk to him about it, he'd

be like, well, this reason or that reason or the other reason. And

he didn't know what the number was then, to be fair, he just knew that

they were coming back. The thing is that

what I learned from my experience is a firm stance, right.

And so I went through a situation a while back where we had

a technician who worked for us, super great guy, I

mean, fantastic human being. Had a lot of stuff

going on and

lots of issues. And the thing was that

we had a firm stance, and it was, we're going to talk about this. Tell

me what's happening. Tell me how it happened. Number

one, mistake. Okay? We all make mistakes. Help

me understand. Let's talk about it. How are we going to prevent

this? In that case, information was falsified. No if,

ands, or buts about it. Information was falsified. You clicked a button that said you

torqued the lug studs. You didn't even put the lug nuts on it.

Yeah. There are certain things, though, you've got to make one and

done. I agree. That would have been a,

hey, I'm going to let this one go, but this

ever happens again, you're gone. And then within the

span of the next mistakes that came back

were one and then another. And

those two mistakes came back at the exact same time. And I sat him down

and I said one of them was a safety. And I said, I

cannot do this. I will not do this. Help me understand.

In 99.99% of all cases, I would be

terminating you right now. I'm willing to develop a program and a

system, but we're going to have to do something different here.

And everything you do is going to be quadruple checked by somebody else.

We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again.

He left the bolts out of the brake caliper.

Bolts weren't even in it. And so

I said, this is not okay. This is absolutely,

100% not okay. He says, well, I can't make enough hours, and that's why

no, you're not making enough hours because we're not giving you

work because we don't trust you. Okay. I backed it

down, was trying to give you easier and easier jobs. That clearly

did not fix things. So here's what we're going to do. And the very next

day, he came in and turned in his resignation, and 18

cars came back directly after that. Every car he had worked on came back. That's

how it always happens. Technician leaves, and all of a sudden you get piled up.

A lot of them. Yeah, I will say the technician that just left me,

we haven't gotten anything back. Yeah, but that was five. That was a

different situation. He left because his boss was a complete

jackass to him, and he was making fun of him. He was picking

on him nonstop. He questioned for his own good,

of course. Yeah. He's on a

podcast talking about his personal decisions and his personal

life. He cuts the lawn at the shop. He's cutting

my mom's lawn right now. Fantastic human being.

Nick, you just got to drop the anchor and come on back.

I might even give you a raise. Nick, I just want to point this out.

I am to the point in my life, I've never

been one that worries about heaven or hell or anything like that. That's never been

concern of mine. But I am

somewhat worried that just sitting next to this man is probably

going to get me struck by lightning at some point. Have you ever

seen the episode of south park where cartman gets struck by lightning?

You watch a lot of south park. I love south park.

You do remind me of cartman. I can't watch south park with my kids, obviously,

for obvious reasons. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I have been showing them old simpsons

episodes, like seasons one through

eight, a few episodes from ten, but

one through eight, gold. Every single one, I just laugh and laugh.

My kids don't get the jokes. Like, what are we

watching? Well, it's just a cartoon, and it's kind of funny, and

there's some childish humor in there, but they don't get, like, the pop

reference 90s pop reference or the

older references from the old twilight

zone episode. They have no idea. And I'm laughing. Maybe

we should start watching the simpsons. You guys never watched the simpsons?

Well, I mean, we have. Yeah, just not together. It's been like

decades. And you've seen all the memes,

like how the simpsons predicted things that

don't watch the simpsons. That's not what no, I mean, yes, they do that,

but you got to watch the

commentaries, because they will explain

that, okay, there's three jokes in this seven

second sequence. There's three jokes in there, but I thought we could squeeze

in one more joke in there,

and they just build the absurdity. It's like, well, that's kind of funny, but

that's absurd, that's funny. And then another layer, and then another layer,

and that kind of love and

that's art right there. They're just trying to squeeze that extra

stupid joke in there just to make it that much

funnier. They don't do it anymore. The new ones are just awful. You can't

after season ten. So not only do you have time to watch

cartoons, you watch people talk about the cartoons.

Maybe we should stop calling people. We'd have more time to watch

cartoon. I moved

from central illinois to st. Louis for a job.

They offered me a position in st. Louis, and I took it. And

so I filled up my

GeoMetro with my TV, a recliner,

and some junk right in the back, and I rented an

apartment, and I had my little 19 inch TV, and I

had my DV, or I think it was a PlayStation two or whatever. I

had that hooked up to it. And I didn't have money for

cable or anything like that, so I watched

episode after episode, the simpsons, seasons

one through eight on DVD with the commentary. Because you've already seen

the episode, you knew all the jokes, but now I want to hear the commentary

just over and over. And you played a few the three or four video

games you had, and that was it. I ought to be young again.

That was so much simpler. I look back going, it was

spaghetti or tuna melts every night, because that's what chad's money for.

No, I would make spaghetti

that would feed me for a week. Am I boring you with my story? My

heart wrenching story about the simpsons and the commentary DVD

stuff? Honey, if you thought that that was what was going to

bore me about the things you talk about, you'd be losing your

mind. I had this guy come in. This guy looks like a

nice guy. I don't know, what was his name exactly? You're a jackass for not

asking. Anyway, he comes in and he's like, oh,

yeah, we're here recording a podcast. Like, oh, I know you guys. You're that

guy that calls everybody dear.

Why? It's a problem.

It's a real problem, because

if you pay enough attention when he says dear.

It's not he's like, It's a term of endearment. It is a term of endearment.

He says it dear. It's

always in this way, like he's getting ready to tell you how fucking stupid you

are. No.

Yes. Say dear to them. He's right. Can't help it. He's

right. He's right. By my tone and

usage of random words. I didn't facial expressions.

Listen, he's right. That's not what

he was trying to do. It's just he was trying

to convey without saying I'm much smarter than

you, that he was much smarter.

One of my technicians, he's like, I was saying, like,

oh, so and so is mad at me. He hates me, wants to hit me

if he sees me sometime, which is common, apparently. And

he's like, did you call him dear? I go,

Is that a thing? And he goes, yeah. Nobody's told you? I'm like,

no. He goes, yeah, it's super condescending. You shouldn't call

people dear. And I go, I'm not

trying to be condescending. He was like, Well, I know that now that I

know you, you call me dear. I'm like, I don't care.

But if they don't know who you it comes off as super

condescending. And I'm like, really?

I can't help it, though. It comes out I'm not trying to be

condescending. You're just trying to prove you're smarter.

That's when you do that. Trying to prove that I'm smarter.

Yeah. It's not even that. I opened a shop. Level

one stupidity right there. I opened, not

bought. So step one, I already made a mistake. And

then I decided I was going to put that shop in an area with

30 other shops and then have no street visibility.

Stupidity number two, like, I can keep stacking stupid things. I've

done. The problem is over and over and. Over, these stupid things have made

you so smart, the rest of us just. Can'T even I just made a lot

of mistakes, that's all. A lot of mistakes. Speaking

of mistakes, are we going to do debriefs when we get back? Yes,

we're going to do debriefs when we get back. Sure are.

Well, that sounded like it sucked. Yeah, a little bit.

Terrible. Awful.

It's easy for me to say something because I've been out of the situation, but

he was telling me about a situation with another

couple. Husband works in the back, wife works in the front.

Very similar situation where things have all of

a sudden gone sideways and the business is on the verge of

closing. I'm hearing him tell

me, and I go, this doesn't make

any sense at some point, and I get it. You get into the

weeds and you start to make excuses like you're saying,

but at some point, I would have lost one person.

And when I lose somebody, I take it very personally, like, I did something wrong

here. I blame myself for losing that tech because I did. I did

lay into him way. Too hard. But yet at some point, it got funny

and it was cathartic for me to make fun of him, but whatever. Oh, Lord,

he deserved it. He made bad choices. Anyway,

I still love him. I want him to come back, just not with the baggage

he had. Anyway. We all have

that tick emphasis. On bag, by the way. Lucas

anyway,

by the way, we're working on his truck. It's at the shop.

Anyway,

I would have lost that first person, and I would have taken it very personally,

and I would have asked everybody, and at some point, somebody would have told me.

It's like, hey, it's Bob. What do you mean

it's Bob? He's awful to work with. Like, you're going to lose more people. Like,

I'm thinking of quitting on the second

one, it would have been flamethrower to the shop on the second

person because I'm not going to. Hiring is the most god

awful experience anybody, any shop owner, any

manager has to go through hiring is miserable.

It is awful. Writing the ad is awful. Putting it out there is

awful. Interviewing and then

am I making the right decision? I don't want to bring the wrong person in.

And you're like, I need to get somebody in here. And that whole

process is just exhausting and taxing,

and I am not going to lose people. Not like that. On the second

person. Flamethrower to the shop. Somebody's telling me what the hell is going on here?

I shouldn't have lost two people. What's going on? Somebody would have

festive that guy right there. I feel like he's calling me

dear. Yeah, just a little bit. Listen,

dear. No,

here's the thing, is that if you do any

research on narcissism, right, narcissism is a pretty big thing. If you

do a little bit of research on it, you find out that when human beings

are confronted with a narcissist, one of the things they do is they

begin to blame themselves for what that person's doing,

right? And that person can convince them by the things they say.

Because most human beings don't say mean things to one another, right? They don't

say things to be hurtful. They don't place blame. They just say,

hey, here's the situation. Here's what's going on. That's what we do as human

beings. And so the natural human

reaction when dealing with a truly narcissistic

person is that I am going to try and figure out what I'm doing

wrong because I'm the common denominator. But you

don't realize they're actually the common denominator.

And so I think it's somewhat

understandable the decision that you guys made, because

an addict is a narcissist. That's all there is to it.

There's no way around that. And I'm sure some mental health expert will come and

bash me for saying. That from at least behaving in a

narcissistic fashion, right. From my experiences as an

addict, right? And so the problem is that when you're dealing with someone

like that. They're going to say that it's your fault. They're going

to blame you. They're going to tell you why it's not their fault. They're going

to put all of this out there in such a way. And I'm serious. Go

watch a YouTube video about what is a narcissist and watch their

behaviors and tell me that it's not the tech that you had.

And if you find yourself if anybody listening finds themselves in that

situation, they go right now, because that was

the biggest mistake I ever made. My business is I kept somebody that was like

that, and if I had let them go, I'd be much further along

my journey of being successful than I am right now. I hurt a lot of

people, a lot of friends, a lot of family by letting that person stay in

the business. And that sucks because I know how emotional you feel

about it, because you feel personally responsible for the damage that person did

to other people, and you felt like you should have been there to protect them

and stop it. And you can't do that all the time. But the reality is

we have to make ourselves aware of that. And to all the

technicians who are out here fussing saying technicians aren't treated

well, this is a perfect example of what happens to shop

owners every single day in this country, is that somebody like

this walks in and acts this way to a shop owner, and over

time, the shop owner will become jaded about technicians. They will become

jaded about people they bring into the shop because they've experienced this,

so now they don't trust anybody. And it's something

that we all have to be responsible for fixing. Are you going to be

quicker to fire someone now, do you

think? Probably. I'd like to say so,

yeah. Pay more attention to it. Don't just overlook things and just

assume, well, that person probably just quit because they had their own thing going on,

or that person's gone, because who knows why? Dig into it a little

bit deeper and see. I think if I have concerns, then I'll talk to the

team that they're working with. One of the things that I didn't know he was

doing was he was telling our new hire to watch his

back because the service writer was ordering the wrong parts to

sabotage him. But the funny part is that the wrong parts we'd order

were the ones that he sourced himself.

But if I had just asked people in the shop

what was going on, I would have known. Yeah. I think

that if I ever find myself avoiding the shop, that's going to probably be a

red flag for me, because I like being in the shop. Yeah.

I don't know. I'd like to say I am

100% guilty of not putting more rigid

parameters around what's acceptable and what's not

acceptable. I excuse a lot of bad behavior

and we were talking at lunch, and I

go, Maybe I'm just not cut out for it

because we talk to a lot of really successful shop owners

and those bastards will not hesitate

to fire someone tomorrow if they are not meeting

their expectations performance wise, they're

gone. It's my family or yours. And I like my family more than yours.

Goodbye. And then out the door they go. That level of

ruthlessness, I think, is what I called it.

And I don't say that disparagingly. It's a

ruthless mindset to say that this will succeed

come hell or high water, and I'm not going to let you stand in the

way of it. And then that's it. I don't know that I got

that in me. You've heard me tell somebody in our industry

before that, hey, I'm almost envious of how ruthless

you can be. Right? I know it sounds crazy, but

it's like, I could not do that if I tried. That emotional

detachment. Yeah. I could not do it if I tried. What were you going to

say? I got sidetracked with the

emotional detachment thing. It'll come back to you. It was going to be a great

point, too. It's going to make the entire podcast it's going to be the

snippet that I share. Make this sucker blow up.

These two are on. It'll blow up no matter what. Yeah.

The last one did really well. It's his pretty face. Really? Look at this

face. Face for podcast? Yeah, face for Radio.

You guys didn't listen to it, I could tell because you would have known that

it was not on video. It was just audio because of jerks. Forget

it. I'm cutting this whole thing down. Delete

all right. Thanks for sharing that. We definitely listened to it. We've

listened to the podcast a few times. It sucks hearing your own voice. I don't

like hearing my voice. You get over it, trust

me. Listen, David what's

interesting about David david's complete the opposite. He skips everybody else talking

and he. Just listens to so the reason why I do that the reason why

I do that I thought he was he's not joking.

The reason I do that you're the only

say, like, a lot of stupid things. I'm not just joking. They're

just jokes. I've had to tell several people, don't take

anything I say seriously. I'm just kidding. We

don't. I'm glad. Yeah, I know, right?

But you get these comments and he'll sit I don't get them.

He gets them and he's like, oh, yeah, that dude hates you.

What did I do? You said something about Land Rovers one

time. He's not even joking. We all have,

though. You're going to get more hate

mail. You're going to get us more hate mail. That's what's getting ready to happen.

Dude's going to be upset because we talked about it all this weekend and. I

didn't this whole weekend, we have dropped stupid comments

on Land Rovers at. Every single so now

when my service writer listens to it, she's going to be so upset.

I think that's the one is. Does she own Land Rovers? Oh, yeah,

she loves them. Yeah, I do, too. 100%. No, but

she loves them because she likes to drive them, not because they bring us business.

Well, he thought we were discouraging technicians from working on

it's. Like what they break. Why would I discourage you from work? You want to

fix cars. Land Rover is perfect place to start. And then,

Minnie, what's one level above that? Jaguars are the

worst. I think they're worse than Land Rovers. Flaming piles of garbage. We

have two in our lot right now. Jaguars? Yeah. What years

is it like the Ford Jaguar or is it Jaguar? Jaguars. No, we have four

because we have two F paces right now, too. Oh, no.

Sorry about your luck. When you get back to the shop. Next,

they're all. Know. I've

never heard a shop owner be so

thrilled about the potential of having a shop fire when the

shop's full of Jaguars. Well,

I hate it for you. Throw a few Volvo in there.

Volvo. I like Volvo. Really? Yeah. I think they're so

cool. Quirky swedish cars. All right, listen,

dear.

That cuppy deep. I'm never going to do it again. I'm

just kidding. The high school educator in my

community was a Volvo master tech, and I said,

there is no greater skill set

required for being a teacher than a Volvo

master technique. What do you mean? I was like, if you can tolerate those things,

there is no way 16 year old kids ruin your people get. So

upset at Volvo's. I don't understand.

Yeah, the wire harness does melt or, like, flake away. I get that.

Disintegrate. They disintegrate, so that's a thing. But they do it on all

of them. So it's like, well, okay, we got these weird, like, lights

or whatever, but if you go really old,

they're all the same car, just longer versions of each other. They're

just, like slightly longer. Slightly longer. All the exact

same. The saddle tanks in the XC. Ninety s right. The

power steering. So when they decided they were going to stay in

business and Ford bottom, and then they started,

like, intermixing Ford and stuff like that. But the XC 90,

those were turds. Yeah, and I could see. But then that

becomes a Land Rover conversation where, like, is this your first Volvo XC

90? Is this your first Land Rover? I know.

Okay, don't stress. There's always just get a drip

pan. And if it stops leaking, please don't drive it. Have

it.

But you tell them with the XC 90s,

they have so many issues, and they stack up on top of each other.

So if this is their first XC 90, I don't care how good of a

deal you got. I'm sorry. This is going to turn into

a $10,000 adventure. I

had a really good client of mine and somebody that we've become

friends and we have a mutual

understanding that I charge more than what he wants to pay. He's super frugal,

but cool guy, right? Like, it's good.

And he had a Volvo, and it was the power steering idler deal

where the gear would actually go bad and you have to

disassemble everything. It's like a whole timing assembly. And so

I gave him a price, and it was like $12,000. And he got mad at

me and he was not going to be my friend anymore. He took it to

Volvo and he said, fuck that piece of shit. He's like, they

wanted 20,000. Yeah, I know. I told you, dude. What year was it? I

can't remember. I'll go back and was it one of the newer, newer ones? Yeah,

it was fairly new. Like nine, maybe? Yeah.

All right. You guys probably want to go eat. My tummy is

grumbly. It's all David's fault. I'm sorry.