Changing The Industry Podcast

Lucas [00:00:00]:
Braxton, are you good? It looks like you're playing on your phone. You know, I've never met somebody so disrespectful to show up on a podcast.

David [00:00:06]:
How do you hit the button? You hit the button?

Lucas [00:00:08]:
Yeah, I hit the button. What are you doing?

David [00:00:13]:
Is it recording?

Lucas [00:00:14]:
I don't know. Is it? It doesn't say. It's recording. What did you do?

David [00:00:19]:
I didn't do anything. So I'm saying. I'm asking.

Lucas [00:00:22]:
Is the hard drive lighting up?

David [00:00:24]:
Yeah. What do I hit?

Lucas [00:00:27]:
Maybe you should hit record.

David [00:00:30]:
I hit record this right here.

Lucas [00:00:31]:
Just tap it one time. I have a PC here, so I can look at it and verify.

David [00:00:40]:
Well, I do, but I don't have the software downloaded.

Lucas [00:00:44]:
Did yours ever download? Stop before it did. Put your headphones on.

David [00:00:51]:
He doesn't want to record. I can tell. He had to change shirts and that was it. He's like, I'm done. I'm done. Gave up the day.

Lucas [00:00:58]:
He gave up.

David [00:01:00]:
I understand. That would happen to me, too.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:02]:
I try to change shirts every couple hours just to switch it up, keep it fresh.

Lucas [00:01:08]:
Yeah, yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:09]:
You know how it is all the time. Yeah.

Lucas [00:01:11]:
Yeah.

David [00:01:13]:
Lucas.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:14]:
Lucas. I just love always the comparison between what they're wearing, but, you know, he definitely keeps it fresh.

Lucas [00:01:21]:
Yeah, you gotta keep it fresh. Sure. I don't wanna look like this.

David [00:01:26]:
Are you saying I look like a slob? No. My shirt has a collar.

Lucas [00:01:29]:
I love how he stopped mid right.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:33]:
My shirt has a collar. Is that your soul? Cause I'm talking to it. It's sharp, calling me out. No, you don't look like a slob. You look fine. You look good. David, you look great. Fantastic.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:45]:
The table, though, does not with all the chords everywhere.

Lucas [00:01:49]:
No, look, you got Braxton out of focus.

David [00:01:52]:
Well, focus, like, wanted it. I had him in focus. I probably's fine, right?

Justin Allen [00:02:01]:
Might be a position.

David [00:02:03]:
No, that's good right there.

Lucas [00:02:04]:
Okay. It's good right there.

David [00:02:06]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:02:06]:
Justin.

Justin Allen [00:02:07]:
What's up, gentlemen?

David [00:02:08]:
You got to remove that green bottle, though. There you go. Perfect. Perfect.

Lucas [00:02:14]:
Fluffles.

Justin Allen [00:02:15]:
I'm feeling like Christmas.

Lucas [00:02:17]:
Yes.

Justin Allen [00:02:19]:
Like, how many days of the year are you so excited to see all your friends?

Lucas [00:02:22]:
I know, it's pretty awesome because, like, everybody's here. Yeah.

David [00:02:24]:
And it's crippling anxiety going. I don't want to go.

Justin Allen [00:02:28]:
Completely the opposite.

David [00:02:29]:
Really?

Justin Allen [00:02:29]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:31]:
Literally, Christmas gives me anxiety. So, I mean, I. He said Christmas was like, you feel stressed right now, huh?

Lucas [00:02:39]:
Well, but he's early. He's early in his first marriage. And so this is like the first relationship he's ever been in. Yeah, it's the first relationship he's ever been in. First marriage. Like, found the first girl and married her right off the go. Yeah. Never been with anybody else.

Lucas [00:02:55]:
And so, like, now he's learning, like, this is what my life is now.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:02]:
Pretty much Blessed and highly favorable. Pretty much, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Lucas just loves to spitball.

Justin Allen [00:03:09]:
Sure.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:09]:
And eventually something will stink. Eventually he'll get something, Right.

Lucas [00:03:12]:
Maybe. Maybe.

Justin Allen [00:03:13]:
No showing up here this morning. I had a two hour and 15 minute drive. And it's just.

David [00:03:17]:
It is.

Justin Allen [00:03:18]:
It's like Christmas. Like.

Lucas [00:03:19]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:03:19]:
All these great people are gonna be there. We're gonna learn great stuff. We're gonna eat great things.

Lucas [00:03:23]:
Is it because it's the people?

David [00:03:24]:
Did you drive the Saab?

Justin Allen [00:03:26]:
No, that was my objective. It'll have to be here next year.

Lucas [00:03:30]:
Is it because it's like, the people that we know. Like, what's different about this event, you think?

Justin Allen [00:03:34]:
It's this combination? Because it's the people that I already know that I love.

Lucas [00:03:38]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:03:39]:
I like to ramp up the enthusiasm for David in this part, and then it's the people that I don't know yet that I know I'm gonna love.

Lucas [00:03:46]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:03:46]:
But I mean, it's very exciting for me.

Lucas [00:03:48]:
Lots of people here.

David [00:03:49]:
That makes. That whole conversation just made me anxious.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:51]:
See, David and I are made you or you were. Conversation.

David [00:03:55]:
I didn't come into the conversation anxious. He just made me anxious.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:58]:
Yeah.

David [00:03:59]:
The enthusiasm.

Justin Allen [00:04:00]:
Hugs all around. Rachel says, by the way, good morning, happy Thursday. Hugs.

Lucas [00:04:04]:
She's so awesome. She's legit. You definitely need to give David.

Justin Allen [00:04:07]:
That's the first virtual hug for David in the morning, I hope.

Lucas [00:04:09]:
Yeah.

David [00:04:09]:
You know. Already been molested.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:10]:
Yeah, he's already been. Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:04:12]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:04:12]:
Good. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:13]:
Yeah.

David [00:04:14]:
Why is that a good thing? Wow.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:17]:
I mean, it's what the world wants.

David [00:04:18]:
It.

Lucas [00:04:19]:
It's.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:19]:
If you say it enough, people are gonna.

Justin Allen [00:04:22]:
I know. I'm surprised you don't get assaulted, like, with love at all of these things.

Lucas [00:04:25]:
Yeah.

David [00:04:26]:
It's like. It's like somebody with a peanut allergy makes them break out.

Lucas [00:04:29]:
I thought you were going somewhere else with that.

David [00:04:31]:
And then everybody just keeps walking up going, hey, I heard you have a peanut allergy. Here's some peanuts. And they. They shove peanuts all up in your.

Justin Allen [00:04:37]:
Face, slather peanut butter on your cheeks. Yeah.

David [00:04:40]:
And then everybody's like, no, it's a good thing. That's fine.

Lucas [00:04:43]:
Yeah. Exposure therapy.

Justin Allen [00:04:45]:
That's what it is.

David [00:04:46]:
Yeah. That is. You're supposed to. But in, like, Tiny bits. For example, I would have gotten up this morning, said hello to somebody, then gone home. That would have been my exposure for the day. Listen, maybe next year. Two.

David [00:04:59]:
Two hellos.

Lucas [00:05:01]:
I specifically requested to be able to get up on stage and introduce Jeff tomorrow just so I can tell everybody in the room to make sure they give David a hug, because he loves hugs.

Justin Allen [00:05:10]:
Nice.

Lucas [00:05:10]:
I've got it set up just for that reason.

Justin Allen [00:05:12]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:05:13]:
Like, I've seen a whole speech every.

David [00:05:15]:
Year, it turns into a whole. Go molest David.

Lucas [00:05:20]:
I mean, do I need to get you a dictionary? Because you might. If that's what's happening, you might need.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:26]:
I mean, what happened in this studio a little while ago was pretty. I mean, it started. It started that way. Like, it could have been headed that direction. It really could have.

Lucas [00:05:36]:
Yeah. But he would have relaxed once they got started. It would have been better.

David [00:05:39]:
All. All we needed was some baby oil, and then that would have been it.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:45]:
Oh, you know, See, he said Christmas.

Lucas [00:05:51]:
David said baby oil, and Braxton.

Braxton Critcher [00:05:56]:
See you guys. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.

David [00:05:59]:
The problem with these podcasts is that this won't come out till, I don't know, late 2024, early 2025. And so the baby oil reference won't. Won't be relevant.

Justin Allen [00:06:11]:
It'll be right in time for Christmas, though, so.

David [00:06:14]:
Yeah, that's true.

Justin Allen [00:06:14]:
Speaking of the Saab, why are we not incorporating, like, a car thing into this?

Lucas [00:06:20]:
That would be really cool.

Justin Allen [00:06:21]:
It just made sense as I was walking in the parking lot, and there's this really cool Acura Integra out front, and I thought, man, why is everybody not driving their fun car to this thing?

Lucas [00:06:28]:
We should. We should do that.

David [00:06:29]:
You have fun cars.

Justin Allen [00:06:30]:
Well, the Saab's my fun car.

David [00:06:32]:
What's my car?

Lucas [00:06:33]:
I don't know.

David [00:06:34]:
What a fun car is.

Justin Allen [00:06:34]:
The extra car you have for fun.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:35]:
We're not wealthy enough.

David [00:06:36]:
Those are my loners at the shop.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:38]:
I know we're not wealthy enough for that.

Justin Allen [00:06:40]:
I just.

David [00:06:40]:
Yeah. My Minivan for the $1,500 back is my fun car. Like, it gets me to point it from point A to point B.

Justin Allen [00:06:48]:
Obviously, there's enough fun car people here. You know, I think that would be a neat way to kind of just add a little flavor to the whole thing.

David [00:06:55]:
That would ramp up that I have to meet flavor fun car people.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:58]:
The fun cars is the go karts.

Justin Allen [00:07:00]:
That is a fun car. That's true. That's true.

Lucas [00:07:03]:
That's the fun.

Justin Allen [00:07:03]:
It's fun. On the back is the sub Fun.

David [00:07:05]:
In the sense that you don't know whether you're going to make it where you're trying to go.

Justin Allen [00:07:08]:
That is so much. I was thinking that just last weekend. That's absolutely part of the adventure.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:12]:
It depends on who's driving.

Justin Allen [00:07:13]:
If you're a. I don't know, like, if you're a car guy that has a fun car that you're tinkering around with and you're confident you're always going to get where you're going. I think you're missing out on part of the adventure.

Lucas [00:07:22]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:07:22]:
I really. You got to keep the tools in the back.

David [00:07:24]:
That is insane.

Justin Allen [00:07:25]:
Fire extinguisher. 100% fire extinguisher.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:28]:
They were.

Justin Allen [00:07:28]:
Yeah, you can't. You. That's why I didn't drive it this morning.

David [00:07:31]:
That's a Volvo. Volvo. Did Saab have the. The wire.

Justin Allen [00:07:35]:
There's a wire issue there, too. Yeah, I'm playing with that. That's a good time.

David [00:07:38]:
Yeah, the insulation that. Yeah, the insulation. He doesn't know. You're not a car guy. The insulation would flake off.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:44]:
Yeah, that sounds good.

David [00:07:45]:
It would flake off. The. The wires and then the car. And then the car would just.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:49]:
Light on fire.

Justin Allen [00:07:50]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:51]:
Just goes.

Lucas [00:07:53]:
He. He has, like, really been making some strides and understanding the automotive industry in a different way. He has been. He came up. We did a. What, two weeks ago, we did a video talking about alignments. Yep. And then so, like, we get done and Braxton's asking questions like, what does that mean? What does that mean? I'm like, I have no idea.

Lucas [00:08:11]:
It's just here to help. I don't know, though. But, I mean, Braxton's picking up pretty quick. He's figuring it out. He's kind of stuck in the automotive industry now. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:22]:
I mean, you know, I kind of have to. To get your thumb off of me, so I don't really have much of a choice.

Justin Allen [00:08:30]:
But I'm.

David [00:08:31]:
That'll never stop.

Justin Allen [00:08:32]:
I'm enjoying the outsider perspective, honestly. Yeah, I'm enjoying that.

Lucas [00:08:36]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:08:36]:
Yeah, it's. I mean, that's. It's. We need to hear it sometimes. Right? Like, we're behind the curtain, so we take all these things for granted.

Lucas [00:08:42]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:08:43]:
And then there's a.

Lucas [00:08:45]:
There's a lot of stuff that he has asked questions about, or I've realized that he said something, or, you know, he's been making the videos for social media for the shop, and there's a lot of things that he's worked with him to put out, and then I've thought my technicians didn't know the answer to that. Right. Or, hey, it's really odd that Braxton has that question because it seems so obvious to us. Right, right. And, you know, I was listening to a service advisor a while back, and I was listening to a telephone call, and he said, yeah, we're going to do a DVI on your car. And. And like, Braxton was saying something just a while back. He did a video on dvi and he didn't even know what DVI was.

Lucas [00:09:29]:
But we think about that when we use the verbiage and speaking with clients and when we're. We're trying to educate them. A lot of times we put this technical stuff up front to make it seem like we know what we're talking about. He's. And I mean, he's not the brightest boy, but I mean, he is pretty smart. And so like, he, you know, the fact that he wasn't picking it up, it was kind of eye opening to me.

Justin Allen [00:09:52]:
Right.

Lucas [00:09:53]:
Damon just sends it to him. He's like, I don't care if you know what it is or not. Like, click yes or no, whatever.

David [00:09:59]:
I don't put acronyms in the dvi. It says on there, like, front brakes, it's green, you're fine.

Lucas [00:10:10]:
But I mean, like, when you get down to red and yellow and they need to make a decision between one thing or the other, there's a note.

David [00:10:16]:
Oh, we just estimate everything Sunday. We don't pull the Mike Allen. We don't do that nonsense.

Justin Allen [00:10:21]:
We do the, you know, behind the curtain. We use a lot of acronyms for stuff. Like, it took me a long while to make sense of what y'all were talking about when you kept saying MSOs.

Lucas [00:10:28]:
Right, right.

Justin Allen [00:10:28]:
You know, and it just kind of flows out and we don't really think about it. But so certainly talking to customers and front counter people are trying to sound informed and educated and intelligent. And we have customers, and I say this all the time, they're coming to us for wiper blades and tire pressure.

Lucas [00:10:42]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:10:42]:
You know, we take it for granted how foreign our world is to the average person.

Lucas [00:10:47]:
For sure.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:47]:
It. I think it helps because most people don't care.

Lucas [00:10:52]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:53]:
Just don't care. And if you're in the industry, you know, you know the acronyms. But you're. You're a car nerd. And so you love all this stuff. And for the most part, you're talking about point A to point B. People just care if their car gets point A to point B. And sometimes I think when I'm shooting a video with a tech, helping them realize, because that's kind of like I'm getting in there.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:14]:
I'm starting to learn some things. But still, for the most part, all I really care about is if my car passes inspection and I can get where I want to go.

Justin Allen [00:11:23]:
Put in the gas, turn the keys.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:25]:
That's all they need.

Lucas [00:11:26]:
Well, I mean, it was. It was like two months ago. He comes to me, he's like, hey, I think I'm going to need some tires and cars in the shop. And I mean, dude, they're completely bald.

Justin Allen [00:11:34]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:11:34]:
And I'm like, dude, you know how bad this is, right? He's like, it's been fine. It's just I got a flat tire. I was like, let's put some tires on the car. So we put tires on the car. He calls me back and he's like, oh, my God. I'm like, what? He's like, it was raining and my car drives different.

Justin Allen [00:11:48]:
I didn't feel like I was going to die.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:50]:
I was ride.

Lucas [00:11:51]:
And so. But, you know, you make a valid point. I had a customer that's a good friend of mine a while back, and they came to me and they said, hey, like this DVI stuff, like the pictures and stuff, you don't have to send me that. I'm not going to look at it. I don't care. Just tell me what's wrong with the car and fix it. Okay. And so I give them the list of things, and they're like, holy cow, like, all this is wrong with my car.

Lucas [00:12:11]:
And I began to, like, work through the things that we found and the things they need to know about with the car. And they're like, look, I really just want to be able to get from A to B. And so, you know, Rena does the service advisor coaching for my staff, and one of the things that she's always on to them about is understand what does this person want to do? Like, what do they want? Like, to us, oh, we need to fix all these things. Yeah, Right. Not even necessarily, like, red or yellow. It's like, hey, these are our priorities. But to them, some of that, even if it is a safety concern, like, is it going to cause the wheel to fall off between here and there? No. Okay, well, cool.

Lucas [00:12:48]:
I'm good. I don't. I'm not worried about it.

Justin Allen [00:12:49]:
Right.

Lucas [00:12:50]:
And so we see things from a very different perspective. And if we aren't willing to slow down and listen to them and understand what their desire is, the Other option is as you build a relationship and you get to the point that you both trust one another and they say, hey, you're my car guy. Here's what I want to accomplish. Yeah, just do what you need to do.

Justin Allen [00:13:09]:
Well, this was a beautiful thing about Dutch's intake form.

Lucas [00:13:12]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:13:12]:
It asked that specifically, like, what's your plan for this car?

Lucas [00:13:15]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:13:15]:
What's your long term objective here?

David [00:13:17]:
Nobody's thought that out, though. I mean, it's a nice question to ask, but nobody knows. They're like, I don't know. Hopefully it'll get me home tonight.

Justin Allen [00:13:24]:
Well, but there's plenty of people who are thinking, hopefully my 14 year old will drive it in a couple of years. Hopefully I'll pass it down to my granddaughter or whatever. There's some of that.

David [00:13:31]:
They think that. They think that until they get the car inspected and it needs seven years, thousand dollars worth of work.

Justin Allen [00:13:37]:
Right.

David [00:13:37]:
And then they're like, well, I can get another one for 7,000. Then you laugh, and then they're like, oh, you haven't tried shopping for a car. Exactly.

Justin Allen [00:13:43]:
Have you spent on Marketplace?

Lucas [00:13:45]:
That's bad. It is pretty bad.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:47]:
I think most people probably have at least a general idea of how long they want to keep the car. I would think.

Lucas [00:13:52]:
How long do you want to keep yours?

Braxton Critcher [00:13:54]:
Well, before the market went crazy, I wanted to get rid of it this year.

Lucas [00:13:58]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:59]:
But now I'm like, if we can.

David [00:14:00]:
You know, come up with those plans, though, like, where does that come from?

Braxton Critcher [00:14:06]:
Dave Ramsey.

Justin Allen [00:14:07]:
I was gonna say Dave Ramsey.

Lucas [00:14:09]:
There you go.

David [00:14:10]:
Dave Ramsey. In what sense? That you're just saving up for a car.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:14]:
Yeah.

David [00:14:14]:
And you want to be able to pay cash for it while the value.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:17]:
Of the car is still good enough for trade in.

David [00:14:20]:
I thought, I don't get that. It's like, it'd be different if the cars were designed like phones. Like the phones, like Apple phones, famously get slower over time because they're trying to throttle the performance of the. Of the phone so it doesn't blow up the old processor and the old battery or whatever. And so over time, yeah, you get to start playing with your phone. You're like, this thing is slow and it's time for an upgrade. Okay, that makes sense. But if the car turns on and runs, just keep driving it.

David [00:14:54]:
Like, the only reason why I would get rid of cars because it starts rusting out. I did get rid of one because it was going to be like $2,000 to fix the headliner, and the headliner was like falling on top of Me. And I'm like, no, done. I wasn't gonna pay because I think I paid $2,000 for the car, and I wasn't gonna spend that, so I just got another minivan anyway.

Lucas [00:15:15]:
But I mean, what headliner is $2,000aminivan.

David [00:15:19]:
Headliner for, like, the old town. The old, old town.

Lucas [00:15:23]:
I had a. I had a town. Or. No, it was an Explorer. Dude came and put a headliner in an explorer for 200 bucks. Like Dr. Vinyl.

David [00:15:30]:
I know who I'm talking about.

Lucas [00:15:31]:
Yeah, yeah.

David [00:15:31]:
Okay, great. I don't have those backward connections with the guy that'll get paid meth, and he's perfectly happy doing it.

Lucas [00:15:38]:
You paying nobody in meth.

David [00:15:40]:
I paid, like $1,000 to have a guy do one on a Jaguar for me. And really all I was trying to do is, hey, I need you to pull the headliner out. And we attempted to drop the headliner and realized, oh, I gotta pull the window out to drop the headliner all the way out. We're trying to fix, like, the sunroof or something anyway. Well, this thing was expensive. It's massive. It's a huge headliner anyway.

Justin Allen [00:16:04]:
And they're not meant to fold very well.

Lucas [00:16:05]:
No.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:06]:
Well, yeah.

David [00:16:07]:
And you bend them a little bit and then they're screwed. But my point is, if the car is rusting out and that you get up under there and you're like, huh, look, that subframe is not attached to anything any longer. I should probably get rid of this car at that point. It makes sense. I have used this vehicle to its end.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:25]:
Well, you guys are car people, so you help me with this, because that's been my expectation for a vehicle. Okay, I'm going to get. Because I'm not a new car guy.

Lucas [00:16:34]:
I'm used.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:35]:
So I buy a used car for whatever price, and I think five, six, seven years, if I can keep it in good shape in that period of time, I'll trade it in, get a newer model, whatever. Not a new car, but I'll upgrade some. And used. Because my first car turned into. At a certain point, it was in the shop for just random stuff all the time. And it just. I can't deal with that. Like, I'm the kind of guy that just wants to get in the car and go.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:05]:
And when it's constantly shocked, though, that comes in waves. Not with that car. It was like six months. Every other month, it was something else. And so.

David [00:17:16]:
Okay, well, because once, you know, it's not an age thing. It's. It is a year make A model.

Lucas [00:17:22]:
What was it?

Braxton Critcher [00:17:23]:
It was a 2007 Subaru Legacy.

Lucas [00:17:27]:
Subaru is your junk.

David [00:17:29]:
Well, no, no, no. A 2007 should have been a wave at like, 125 to 150,000 miles. I got to put an engine in it or I've got to do heads and all of that.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:42]:
Timing belt.

David [00:17:43]:
Timing belt, yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:44]:
The axle snapped on it. That was exciting.

David [00:17:48]:
That. That's rare.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:49]:
Just random stuff started happening to this car, and I was like, I just got to get rid of it because it was costing me too much.

David [00:17:56]:
You would stop and go. I just. You got to get under the vehicle, and you got to look at the condition of the vehicle and determine, hey, is this thing rusting apart? Because the axle snapping should have been identified by the shop. The shop. I don't know what junk shop. You.

Lucas [00:18:11]:
It was definitely me.

David [00:18:12]:
Was it you?

Braxton Critcher [00:18:13]:
This is pre Lucas before going to Lucas's job.

David [00:18:16]:
So it is a common issue to see on Japanese vehicles. The dampener will collect moisture over time. You start to see rust build up around there, and you flag it. You say, hey, at some point, this thing's gonna snap in, too.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:31]:
Especially up in the Boone area with all the snow and stuff you can deal with.

David [00:18:35]:
Well, I mean, we deal with it in Kansas. It's whatever. It's a year make a model thing. But. But you would have hit 120 to 150,000 miles, where you would have dropped a ton of money putting heads on this thing. Timing belt, probably done a rack, too, then fluids. Then you would have driven it another 150,000 miles. And then I can understand at 270,000 deciding, you know what? I don't want to drop another seven grand in this car.

David [00:19:03]:
But if you did drop another seven grand and the body wasn't rusting apart and the interior was in good shape, you could drive it to 140,000.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:10]:
So the car.

David [00:19:13]:
450,000, I should say.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:14]:
The car I have now, it's a kia optima 2013.

Lucas [00:19:18]:
I'm sorry.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:18]:
And I got it. Hey, you know what? This has been a really good car for me. Like, it's been great.

Lucas [00:19:24]:
It's not got its first engine, has it?

David [00:19:26]:
How many engines are you in?

Braxton Critcher [00:19:27]:
It's in engine number two. Engine number two.

David [00:19:29]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:19:30]:
So I'm probably going to need to give him a ride back.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:33]:
It was under warranty, thank goodness, because Kia's engine, 7.

David [00:19:36]:
1. But the second one.

Lucas [00:19:39]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:40]:
So I got it with 88,000 miles. Oh, and I think I just eclipsed. Yeah, I'm at 209 now. That's good. I'm at 209, I think. Is that right?

Lucas [00:19:52]:
209.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:53]:
It's got a lot and it's in great shape. I thought I'd like to trade it in this year, but I want to just looked at it and said it looks great. So, I mean, I feel there's.

Lucas [00:20:04]:
There's not anything major.

David [00:20:05]:
I mean, excessive oil consumption is your.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:07]:
Yeah, yeah.

David [00:20:08]:
You would get rid of it.

Lucas [00:20:11]:
Let me ask you this. So you were going to other shops, and I remember the first time I saw your car. It was a little bit of a surprise for you. Right. There were things we talked about that you didn't know about the car.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:23]:
This is the Kia.

Lucas [00:20:24]:
Yeah, yeah. And so what has been your experience? Because one of the things that I feel like I'm always up against, and Justin knows what I'm talking about because he, like, worked our neighborhood. I've always felt like clients come to me for the first time, and it is a real shock to them in some ways compared to the other shops around us. Right. And I'm not saying anything bad about them, but were you at one of the shops that was just like, hey, we'll fix what's broken and send you out? Is that what you were at before? Like, what was the difference between coming to my shop versus one of those shops?

Braxton Critcher [00:20:54]:
I mean, yeah, that was part of it. There was a lot of differences in the shops. But I think you and I were talking about this a little while ago. It's not a auto repair shop serving a customer. It's a customer service business that happens to be an auto repair shop for sure. That's, I think, the main difference. Because that place where I had the axle snap and I dropped it off there, they fixed the car and then didn't call me. And it sat in their lot for two days.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:29]:
I called them, was like, hey, when's. When's that Subaru gonna be finished? Well, it was done two days ago. Oh, gee. Well, I've been asking for rides to work and back. That would have been nice. You know, it's stuff like that.

David [00:21:43]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:44]:
But yeah, they were the kind of people that just fixed the car, sent it on. I didn't get a peace of mind evaluation or anything like that. No pictures, no video, no pictures, no dvi.

Lucas [00:21:52]:
Did they ever tell you anything was going on with the car otherwise?

Braxton Critcher [00:21:56]:
No, not that I know of. No.

Lucas [00:21:58]:
So they just, like, see that. That, to me, feels weird. It feels like if somebody was going to do that, I can't See the logic behind that model, Right. In other words, just saying, hey, we're just going to fix the problem and the consumer looks at us.

David [00:22:13]:
They don't know any different.

Lucas [00:22:14]:
Well, I'm just saying the consumer looks at us like we're ripping people off if we go and tell them. Because that's one of the major complaints, right? Like, look online and it's like, hey, these people. There's a whole YouTube channel of a guy who just goes around and says, like, hey, I'm gonna see if they tell me there's things wrong with my vehicle. The dealership told me it's in perfect condition and he just makes videos trying to bait shops into telling him something.

David [00:22:35]:
What stupid YouTube channel is that?

Lucas [00:22:38]:
I'll find the video and show it to you.

David [00:22:39]:
But.

Lucas [00:22:40]:
So the American consumer thinks that. But that's not really what we do. And it just. It concerns me that the majority of shops are still doing exactly that.

David [00:22:52]:
I don't know if it's the majority.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:55]:
I think there's both. I think there's shops that do that for the right reasons. But I think some of the perception is that shops do that to get money out of you. And there probably are some out there that do that.

Lucas [00:23:09]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:09]:
I mean, they'll say something.

David [00:23:11]:
I don't think any of them do it to get money out of you. I don't think any of them do. Because there's enough broken stuff on cars. I will say it's not malice, it's incompetence. They will get up underneath the vehicle and if they like doing ball joints, everything needs a ball joint.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:29]:
Yeah.

David [00:23:30]:
So everything that's going to come in is going to get flagged, so you'll run into that. Also, shops that incentivize finding work are going to get especially certain types of work or more profitable work or easier work for the technician. That's what they're going to find because that's how they're getting paid. If you don't find those struts are a little soft, you're not going to get paid. And so, you know, you can do struts and kill it every single time. Every car that comes in needs struts. That's just the way it's set up. So it's not that they're doing it intentionally to try to get money out of you.

David [00:24:08]:
Like they're just trying to feed themselves. And they can do it easily and efficiently if they flag X, Y and Z. So every car comes in with X, Y and Z. But that's a That's a result of the shop, the way they incentivize their employees.

Lucas [00:24:23]:
Yeah.

David [00:24:24]:
Did you see that video of the guy that Was all over YouTube? He was walking up to his employees, asking him, hey, how much do you make?

Lucas [00:24:35]:
No, I didn't see it.

David [00:24:36]:
Hey, Bob, how long you been working here? I've been here for seven months. How much do you make? I make 45 an hour. And you came from the dealership, didn't you? Years. He was recruiting in video.

Lucas [00:24:47]:
Who was it?

David [00:24:51]:
What was the name of the Jeff show? He had a big pop in Dave's Auto Center. Yeah.

Lucas [00:24:59]:
Oh, is that who it was?

David [00:25:00]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:25:01]:
That dude seems like maybe that's some recruiting because.

David [00:25:05]:
No, no, it was recruiting like he. At the end of the thing, he's like. He was like, hey, if you want to make big money like these guys do, just don't listen to the jaded.

Lucas [00:25:16]:
Mechanic before you apply.

David [00:25:18]:
I don't know anything about that, but either.

Lucas [00:25:21]:
I'm just saying.

Justin Allen [00:25:23]:
So I think as an industry, I think we've done some interesting things here. And because there is pushback on the DVIs from shops that will say, I'm not one of those shops that's trying to sell you all that stuff. Right? There's, there's some of that that happens and there's some customers that are like, wait a second, don't look over my whole car.

Lucas [00:25:37]:
Like, yeah.

Justin Allen [00:25:38]:
So that weird pushback on it. If we really think historically, what were dealerships only utilized for, for a long time?

Lucas [00:25:45]:
Warranty, work.

Justin Allen [00:25:46]:
Warranty work. The thing that is broken right now, that's the only reason I would take it to the dealership. Because this transmission is doing something funny. Dealership's going to handle that aftermarket, is going to do my oil change stuff or whatever. And then. So the dealerships were just the broken stuff. And then the $10 oil change people, Jiffy Lube, as it were, was kind of the go to on the other side. So as an industry, we created this monster where we're only fixing the broken stuff and we're only doing the quick oil changes.

Justin Allen [00:26:14]:
And the shift is a beautiful thing. I think the shift to. Let's be real, because if I go to a doctor and I say, yeah, I've got something kind of hurting down here, but I've got gangrene on my right angle. I've got some psoriasis happening over here. I've got like a pus on the back of my head. Who knows? And the doctor is only going to take care of this one Thing and not look over the rest of it.

David [00:26:33]:
Grotesque series.

Justin Allen [00:26:36]:
I'm a zombie. He turns out I'm a zombie. Right. But in. The doctor only addresses that one thing. Like, we would think, wow, this doctor's really.

Lucas [00:26:43]:
That's ridiculous.

Justin Allen [00:26:44]:
Yeah, but. And so now we're trying to be thorough.

David [00:26:47]:
That's what they do. What are you talking about? That is exactly. That is exactly what they do.

Justin Allen [00:26:52]:
I think the doctor would say, we're gonna need to have somebody take a look.

David [00:26:54]:
They have absolutely no. That would. If you come to them with X problem, and you're like, hey, I've got this problem. Also, this other thing is bothering me. They're like, let's make another appointment for the other thing. And I gotta run you through another.

Justin Allen [00:27:06]:
Let's make the other point for the other thing, though. They're not gonna just disregard it, right?

David [00:27:11]:
No. But at the same time, here's what they should be doing. I'll give it a point. I'll just speak for myself here. I go in for a physical, and they order blood work because it's part of the physical. It's like, okay, fine, whatever. I get my numbers back. And I had asked for a specific test that she just kept insisting.

David [00:27:36]:
She's like, you're probably fine. And I'm like, I just want to know. I just want to know. And she's like, well, I can't help you if it's off. That's what she told me. She was like, if I can't, I got to refer you to somebody else. I'm like, okay, well, whatever. Well, the number came back a little low.

David [00:27:51]:
And I'm like, okay, well, maybe I want to do something about this. So I saw it at, like, a concierge service, and I said, hey, can you check this out? And they go, hey, we need to run more. We need to run panels again. I just had them done. And he's like, yeah, but make sure that you're not taking this. You're not taking this multivitamin. Make sure you do it first thing in the morning. Make sure you don't work out this huge protocol.

David [00:28:18]:
They end up ordering way more tests than what the physical, the doctor, my general practitioner, whatever had asked for. And it came back that I had a problem with my thyroid, that I probably have had a huge chunk of my life.

Justin Allen [00:28:36]:
Sure.

David [00:28:37]:
And they're like, hey, do you know your thyroid doesn't work? I'm like, what? Also, it's eating itself. It's like it's an autoimmune disease. Like, you've you've got a problem. Like, we need to fix this. I was just at the doctor. They're like, uh huh. Anyway, they usually don't check this. Why would you check it? Like, that's what I'm there for.

David [00:28:57]:
Tell me what's wrong. I'm here for my yearly tell me what's wrong list.

Justin Allen [00:29:00]:
Yeah, that's true.

David [00:29:01]:
They didn't do it. True. Why? Because that's not their specialty. Then what, what the hell am I here for? So you can check my heart. That's it? You're going to tell me my cholesterol is high? That's it?

Justin Allen [00:29:12]:
Yeah.

David [00:29:13]:
Like, look at me. I know. Like I know what I eat. Trust me, I know if my cholesterol is high. Most people do. You're probably fine. He's going to die.

Lucas [00:29:22]:
Valid point.

David [00:29:23]:
He just, he just got his lipid water. What is it?

Braxton Critcher [00:29:25]:
Mountain Dew?

Lucas [00:29:26]:
Yeah. So there's a, there is a protein that if it's high, right? And it's, it's a number you have your whole life. It has nothing to do with your weight, has nothing to do with what you eat. Nothing affects it. Right. Is a protein that you have. And if it's high, it means that you are extremely susceptible to heart attacks, strokes, cardiac events.

David [00:29:48]:
Well, it's because that the arteries can get plaqued up very easily. Right. And so they.

Lucas [00:29:54]:
Yeah, and so they know. And I was watching videos the other night and I've decided, hey, I want to start working on my health again. I've hired a manager for the shop and things are kind of settling down a little bit.

Justin Allen [00:30:04]:
Right.

Lucas [00:30:04]:
Time to be able to do some of that stuff. And, and so I was doing research in this one doctor said, he's like, hey, if you have cardiac history in your family, you need to go get this. Because we're finding that 90% of the people who have heart attacks have this high number. And if that number's high, it's genetic. And we found out that this issue just runs in families. And so it's about 90% of the heart attacks are accounted to this one number. And he said doctors aren't checking it. They're not even looking for it.

David [00:30:34]:
They're not checking it because they're like, I can't give you a pill, so why would I bother to check it? The problem is if you have this number ridiculously high, you can't do anything about that number. It's there, but you can change it. All the other numbers, 10 times more important because if they're even kind of high. You're already screwed because you're predisposed. Yeah, they don't check. They don't even check. Why'd you bring up the doctors? They're competent, all of them.

Lucas [00:31:01]:
You know, I've watched this thing with Scott and Shelley, and, you know, I'm. By the time this comes out, we'll have a better feel of what's going on and where we're headed and what's. What's happening. But, you know, I was asking a friend of mine who works in a particular field that's associated with what Shelley's going through, and I said, tell me something. Like, I'm really concerned about a. The news that they've been given and that doctors are taking this, like, treatment approach to it. And it's such a hard conversation because you care about these people and you don't ever want them. You don't want to have the conversation like, hey, this may be it.

Lucas [00:31:37]:
Right? And it's hard to navigate that. And I know I've had some other family members who went through it, and they're at the very end. And Alex is a great example because we were talking the other day about her stepdad right before he passed. There was one day out of his disease where he looked at his wife and said, I'm going to die, and just, like, freaked out about it. And then the rest of the time was, no, I'm going to get through this. We're going to figure this out. This is going to be okay. And so I watch what's happening with Shelly and Scott, and I realize, oh, my God, she's going back to the doctor.

Lucas [00:32:17]:
This is a really precarious situation. I think we all know where it ends up, no matter what. And she's worried about her quality of life. And now these doctors are over here getting ready to administer these really aggressive treatments, and they're going to do these things that, like. And so I said to Scott, I said, I really think you need to figure out a way. And I don't mean to be disrespectful. I don't mean to be callous or cold, but I feel like you need to find a way to say, like, hey, what. What's the ultimate prognosis? And so he goes to the doctor that they're at yesterday, and the doctor said, well, there's no way to know what the ultimate prognosis is.

Lucas [00:32:57]:
We're not going to know that. Okay? And so 15 minutes before that, the doctor says, oh, we're going to do the spot. Weld on the brain that's going to take out that tumor and you'll go back to the life you had before. Now wait a minute. You can't say that you don't know what the prognosis is, but you've got three tumors on your brain and we're gonna do this radiation treatment, then it's gonna go away. I hear the woman in the background saying it on the phone while I'm on the phone with Scott. And so I messaged my friend who works in this field and she said, let me tell you something. She said, doctors are paid, just like you talk about on your show how some mechanics are paid.

Lucas [00:33:33]:
She said, they're paid in this flat rate system. And she said, I'm gonna tell you something that's exactly right. If they're not treating patients, they're not getting paid. And she said, so the focus right now in the medical field is how do we treat the patient? How do you say the things to get them to say yes to the treatment so we get the insurance money? It's not that. Hey, listen, this is not going to make your life better. This is. Well, hey, the mindset, the thought process is how are we going to get your money while we still have the opportunity to do that? We need to close this sale. Right? That's a problem for me.

Lucas [00:34:12]:
Like, that was really upsetting because, I mean, these poor people have been through the wringer, buddy. Right? And now she's slurring her speech and she's messing her words up and she's like, dizzy and she's having a hard time walking and she's in massive amounts of pain. They're saying that the cancer has weakened the spine, so the spine's splitting down the spinal cord. And the cancer is like. They think the cells of the cancer is like a, like a liquid or like part of the fluid that's moving in the spine, the spinal fluid. They're thinking that the cancer has made it into that fluid and it's circulating in the spine. And they're like, yeah, but you know, we should do this other treatment and then we'll just check on that and see what we think. And then you ask more and they say, oh, well, we won't know what the prognosis is until we do that.

David [00:35:01]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:35:02]:
And it's like, well, we have to do this and then we have to do. Yeah, it's shady.

David [00:35:06]:
It is shady. It is 100% shady. They just, they're look, you walk in, they're just looking to give you some Kind of drug. That's all they wanted to do. The drug is going to cause other, other problems, but then you just have to go back and then they'll give you something else to deal with. The other problems that are. At no point did they go, hey, all of this is being caused because you insist on eating cheesesteaks every night. Like, you should probably just stop eating the cheesesteaks.

David [00:35:36]:
They don't want to do that. No, you keep eating them cheesesteaks. But here's some metformin. Okay, thanks. Hey, this is giving me headaches. Here's some headache medicine. Hey, this is getting me kind of. I get a little sleepy.

David [00:35:46]:
Here's this other thing, and then here's this. And then here's this. And then here's this. At no point did they go, hey, just stop eating the cheesesteaks. They're not good for you. Like, hey, it turns out you got a gluten intolerance. I do? Yeah. You should probably stop eating that.

David [00:36:02]:
I didn't know. I thought I just got a little bloated or I got a little sick or whatever. Right. You just, you don't know. You're like, yeah, everybody deals with this. No, no, you don't.

Lucas [00:36:14]:
But, I mean, is that, is that not what the shops that aren't doing evaluations and trying to, like, parse through the data to be able to help their client, is that not what they're doing, though? Right. Oh, I just have to fix this. I just have to fix, like, the.

Braxton Critcher [00:36:28]:
Shop that I was dealing with. Exactly. Same thing.

Lucas [00:36:30]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:36:30]:
Well, and I think part they, they've been afraid to tell you everything that's wrong with your car because they're afraid you won't come back because you're going to run them off. And that, that's part of that weird mindset that we've created this thing that the extremes of it's broken. Fix that broken thing and just change the oil. All this middle ground has been really poorly handled.

Lucas [00:36:47]:
And remember the dude in Asheville that we went to see who was, like, so distraught and so upset that time? Yep. And like, I'll never get out of this place. Blah, blah, blah. Right.

Justin Allen [00:36:56]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:36:58]:
I, I realize in talking to him, he says, well, there's no way. If I told him everything was wrong with their car, I, I, I can't get the work that I have now out.

Justin Allen [00:37:08]:
Right.

Lucas [00:37:08]:
And all I'm doing is fixing what's broken.

Justin Allen [00:37:11]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:37:12]:
Well, hold up now. And so we hear that from a lot of shops. I'm so busy, I Couldn't take any more work. There's no way I could do this. No way I could do that. And then you dig into the numbers, and you look at what the shop's producing, and you say, that's scary low. Right. It's the inefficiencies within the shop that are keeping them from producing.

Lucas [00:37:31]:
And they're telling themselves this narrative, have this idea of what's happening, but they're not here. Right. We invited that dude to train.

David [00:37:40]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:37:41]:
And I mean, truthfully, if he wanted to fix his business, I think he would be here, right? Yep.

Justin Allen [00:37:47]:
It's a lack of information, right?

Lucas [00:37:49]:
Exactly. But maybe it's that he doesn't really want to fix it.

David [00:37:52]:
Everybody that wants to fix the business goes down that rabbit hole. Like, they're like, hey, I didn't know this. What else do I not know?

Justin Allen [00:38:00]:
Yeah.

David [00:38:00]:
And then you go looking for it, if they don't look for it, and you. Somebody invites them to a show or whatever. Like, I can see him not wanting to come. Like I said, crippling anxiety. I don't want to be here. Whatever. I love the show here. I just.

David [00:38:12]:
I don't want to be anywhere. I want to be home anyway. I can understand Name not coming, but at the same time, like, he. He would go down the Rabbit hole on YouTube or Google or whatever, like, looking for information, and then he stumbles upon the Facebook group or the podcast or whatever. Right. He starts finding all this information, and that then makes him start searching for. Happened to me. Happens to almost everybody.

David [00:38:35]:
We talk to the people that show up.

Braxton Critcher [00:38:37]:
It's like that YouTube video we were watching last night. What was the guy name?

Lucas [00:38:40]:
Tim Kite.

Braxton Critcher [00:38:41]:
Yeah, Tim Kite. You know, he talked about 10% of people just are incompetent. Right. 80% have traits, and then 10%. The 10% are elite.

Lucas [00:38:53]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:38:53]:
And he said the people that have traits are like the guys you guys are talking about who have a shop. They're treading water. They've got customers, but they just don't have that extra oomph to get them over to the next level. If you had the desire, the care, the want to, the will, you'd find that extra thing to get you above that line, to take you to excellent, to take you to the training, the podcast, the things to learn, to grow your business, but don't care enough.

Lucas [00:39:21]:
It's like we were talking about sports yesterday, right? And I did not know this. One of my cousins is. What did you say she Was?

Braxton Critcher [00:39:29]:
She's number 73 in women's golf ranked in the world.

Justin Allen [00:39:32]:
Like, she's.

Lucas [00:39:33]:
Yeah.

David [00:39:34]:
Wow.

Lucas [00:39:34]:
Crazy.

Braxton Critcher [00:39:35]:
And he was like, is that good? I was like, yes. Number 73 in the world. Lucas is incredible.

Justin Allen [00:39:41]:
Pretty high up there.

Lucas [00:39:42]:
And so, like. But Braxton said, like, hey, I've paid attention to what makes. Because he's a big sports guy. He's like, I've paid attention to what makes elite athletes, and it's that they worked for and they put in the sweat, they put in the things that took them in that direction that that guy was like, I'm just waiting to die. I'm just waiting to. That's what David does. But, I mean, that's a little bit different.

Justin Allen [00:40:05]:
Well, and to your point, I don't know that the people don't care necessarily. They haven't decided. They're just so caught up in the fact that they think they're drowning.

Lucas [00:40:13]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:40:14]:
They think they're drowning. And I can't even pretend to do anything else because right now I'm hustling as much as I can. I'm working 70 hours a week. I'm totally freaked out. You know, I think that's a lot of what keeps people from being here. And they're so inefficient. Stuck in the rock, stuck in the.

Braxton Critcher [00:40:28]:
Rut of the cycle that they're caught in.

Justin Allen [00:40:30]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:40:31]:
But I mean, there also is something to just. It's not worth it. Like, the taking that next step is hard.

Lucas [00:40:43]:
Like.

Justin Allen [00:40:43]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:40:44]:
Taking the. Going the extra mile puts in effort and it costs money and whatever. And most people just are not willing to do it.

Justin Allen [00:40:53]:
It's the Maslow's hierarchy of needs of automotive.

Lucas [00:40:56]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:40:56]:
And they're freaked out down on the bottom level.

Lucas [00:40:58]:
Yeah, yeah.

Justin Allen [00:40:58]:
You know, they can't climb it.

Lucas [00:41:00]:
But I mean, how do you take somebody who is in that extreme freaked out stage and get them out of there and then.

David [00:41:07]:
Because you cannot.

Lucas [00:41:09]:
Justin does it all day long.

Braxton Critcher [00:41:11]:
Yeah, exactly.

Lucas [00:41:12]:
I watch Justin do it all the time. And he goes in and he nurtures and he coaches and he. He's like, hey, let me help you. Like, calm down, relax. He doesn't approach it as a vendor. He doesn't approach it as is anything.

David [00:41:24]:
And so have they bought Hunter equipment?

Justin Allen [00:41:27]:
Irrelevant, your honor.

David [00:41:30]:
But I charge you in there. You're in there because they bought equipment or are looking to buy equipment or.

Justin Allen [00:41:38]:
Oh, it's. I'm only in there to make friends. You know that.

Lucas [00:41:40]:
But he's not even joking. I swear to God.

David [00:41:42]:
I believe that. But I'm just saying, though, what's the Intent of walking in there more than once because the guy walks in, you're going to go back in there on an occasional basis. But I'm talking about the nurturing and the coaching and the. Hey, let me prod you along. If they're. If they're in quite. My point is, if they're inquiring about possibly needing or looking at the possibility of buying something like a hunter machine, there's potential. There is what I'm saying.

Justin Allen [00:42:13]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

David [00:42:14]:
Because if they're. They would have just ran you off if they didn't think that maybe I could make some extra money doing alignments or get a better machine or whatever.

Justin Allen [00:42:24]:
Right. But I think your point was something about like, you can't. Or you said something about like you can't turn people around from a different situation.

David [00:42:33]:
And I would argue not without their own. They've got to be willing.

Justin Allen [00:42:36]:
Yeah. But I think this event is full of people who got turned around.

Lucas [00:42:39]:
Yeah.

David [00:42:40]:
Because they were willing. That's my point. I can't keep doing this. Every single day. I gotta change something.

Justin Allen [00:42:46]:
They thought they weren't willing until something lit that spark, something ignited something in them, some kind of hope. And actually that's really my path this year. That's my path this year is to try to show people hope in the reality that there's people, shop owners just like you, who have been at the bottom and they still. Their shop is still a ratty mess, maybe, but they're climbing that hill now. That's really my objective because we gotta get in front of the people who don't know what they don't know. And there's tons of them that aren't participating in anything. And we're trying to expose them to a new reality.

Lucas [00:43:17]:
When you and I first started hanging out, and it was the podcast too. Right. But like, we went and hung out at some shops and went and saw some shops and talked to some people. I had this belief that it was just our corner that had the kind of ratty hole in the wall. Shops that weren't even trying.

Justin Allen [00:43:37]:
Right.

Lucas [00:43:38]:
Yeah. It's the whole country.

Justin Allen [00:43:40]:
It's the whole country.

Lucas [00:43:41]:
Right.

Justin Allen [00:43:41]:
Absolutely.

Lucas [00:43:42]:
The really good shops are the. Or the minority.

David [00:43:45]:
Yep.

Lucas [00:43:46]:
Right. The majority are the shops that are drowning and can't figure it out and won't go to training. And what was the couple in. In Asheville that they were like. No, man. Like a. The minute we can get out of here. Right.

Lucas [00:44:00]:
Sure.

Justin Allen [00:44:00]:
I mean, that's a bunch of them.

Lucas [00:44:02]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:44:02]:
You know, so. Yeah. In the moment I don't. You're, you're questioning my old brain.

Lucas [00:44:06]:
But I mean, like, they, they were saying, hey, like we would love come hang out with y'all and everything else, but like we're trying to focus on living life. Like we're, we're done with this.

David [00:44:15]:
Yeah, I don't blame them. And you know, some shops, you, you guys keep talking about how some of these shops are at the bottom and not making money and blah. Some of these shops are making fine. Oh, yeah, yeah, they're. They're doing just fine. The problem is the consumer is actually getting a inferior product and they are making the rest of us look skeezy because of their skeezy practices. You see what I'm saying?

Justin Allen [00:44:47]:
Absolutely.

David [00:44:48]:
There's a shop down, right down the street from me. And I don't know the guy, he's got. Whatever. It's a fine establishment. He does a lot of used car work. That's how he got started. He was doing all of the used car work in the area, which I have like 50 used car lots around. And everybody was sending their work to him.

David [00:45:12]:
And he was charging like 60 bucks an hour. He was doing one of them deals. Okay. He got busy enough, he ended up opening a second location in a nicer part of town. But if you look on his. He hasn't changed anything. He's done. If you look on his invoice Today, he charges 100 to $120 for Diag.

David [00:45:34]:
And it just says, it's got a line, says Diag, $120. What did you do for that $120? I don't know. It doesn't tell me on this invoice. Maybe you explained it to me, maybe you didn't. Even if you did explain it to me, you think I'm going to remember anything you said? Absolutely not. It. Can I take this to another professional and have them tell me, explain to me what it is that you did? No. Then what the hell? You just charged me money to what, scan it? I don't know what the hell you did.

David [00:46:06]:
Fraud. To this day, that's what he does. But he's making money.

Lucas [00:46:12]:
Tell me about your experience. Like when you go to other shops. I mean, you had a problem. Did they charge you for testing? Did they tell you what was going. Did you get documentation about what they did?

Braxton Critcher [00:46:23]:
The age old, can you look at it? Kind of deal. Yeah.

Lucas [00:46:29]:
Tell me about that experience, what it was like.

Braxton Critcher [00:46:31]:
I mean, it's been a minute, I've been going to your Shop for a while. But yeah, you'll walk in and you tell them kind of what's going on, whatever. You talk to them on the phone and they say, well, come by, we'll run some tests, whatever. And you get there. They do that and tell you what's wrong. Yeah, they charged.

David [00:46:55]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:46:55]:
Do you typically wait on it when you were doing that.

Braxton Critcher [00:47:00]:
Like at the, at the business? No, I had like, somebody dropped me off.

Lucas [00:47:03]:
Yeah, right. So you drop it off. And then when you, when they got done, did they tell you, did they just say, hey, you need to replace this? Did they tell you we did this test and this is what the test was and this was the result of the test? What did they.

Braxton Critcher [00:47:13]:
Oh, no, no, no. They just said, this is the problem, will replace it.

Lucas [00:47:17]:
Right? Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:47:18]:
They didn't go into detail of gave.

David [00:47:20]:
And then if you were like, no, then it's like, okay, it's $100 to look at it.

Lucas [00:47:23]:
Right.

David [00:47:25]:
See that? That's the majority of shops. It's not that they're not making money. They are making money. They're just putting out that kind of product.

Justin Allen [00:47:33]:
Right.

David [00:47:33]:
And if you walk in there going, hey, come to the show. Hey, there's a better way. Quote unquote, better way, or whatever, and the guy's looking at you going, did you see my truck and boat back? Yeah, like, what better way are you gammering on about? What I'm talking about is like, hey, I know you don't feel like a dirtbag, but what you're doing is dirt baggy. It's an inferior product and you're making the rest of us look bad. Yeah, you should stop.

Braxton Critcher [00:47:58]:
And it's those shop that doesn't go.

David [00:48:00]:
Over well, by the way.

Justin Allen [00:48:01]:
Yeah, they don't like that.

Braxton Critcher [00:48:02]:
That just don't care. They're fine with what they're doing. They're making good enough money and they don't care to improve their telling you.

David [00:48:09]:
That'S the fat part of the bell curve. That is the fat part of the bell curve. You guys are like worried about this bottom 15% that are drowning. Okay, yeah, that's great to help those out. But the majority of shops are that. The majority of shops are like, I got my boat, I'm doing fine. We just write diag on the sheet and you know, if they don't buy anything from us, we tell them, hey, it was $80 to look at it. And the customers, whatever, they don't care.

David [00:48:36]:
They don't care. The customer gets an inferior product. And most of them are Paying flat rate. I guarantee you that. They're bringing guys in at 17 bucks an hour and I'll pay you even more if you flag extra amount. They've got these weird pay structures. They've got kids running around 18, 19, 20 years old, running them ragged, doing oil changes and tires and they just burn them out. Never train them, never develop them.

David [00:49:07]:
And then they leave and then they just bring another 18 or 19 year old. I'm telling you, this is like that's. Every shop in Kansas City is like that. All of them. The owner might be in the shop, might not. Older guy probably owns the building. He's been there for 25 years. He's making.

David [00:49:26]:
He's paid everything off. He's pulling 300 to $400,000 every single year or he doesn't. He pulls $50,000 a year and has a whole bunch of sketchy stuff that boats in the shops name. The eight trucks he owns are in the shop names. The three vacation homes are in the shop. See, he was doing one of them. Or he runs two sets of books. I've seen that happen too, where everything's cash is over on here, handwritten, you don't get a receipt kind of deal.

David [00:49:52]:
But he's doing just fine. And they don't care to change. They don't care to change. And it's not whether you're doing DVI or you've got a nice shop management system like shopware or using parts tech. Who else using. You have a wonderful website from shop marketing pros. I'm missing somebody. Or you get great coaching from the institute.

David [00:50:13]:
It's not any of that. It's not any of those things. It is the base motivation of the shop. I drive in an older minivan that has 150,000 plus miles on. My wife is driving around a Honda with 300,000 miles on it. I don't like to buy cars. I think every car out on the market right now is absolute dumpster fire garbage. Every single one of them.

David [00:50:40]:
Some Toyotas are okay, but most of them, I'm talking like, thank you.

Justin Allen [00:50:44]:
There we go.

Braxton Critcher [00:50:45]:
I felt it. Wait a minute.

Justin Allen [00:50:47]:
Yeah, come on now.

Braxton Critcher [00:50:48]:
I gotta get that.

Lucas [00:50:49]:
Back this down a little bit. Back this down.

David [00:50:51]:
I'm just telling you, liking every Ford is junk, every Chevrolet's junk. They're all, they're just, they are, they are just degrees of junk. And I get this all the time. Like what would you buy if I.

Lucas [00:51:01]:
How do you feel about Volkswagen and Audi?

David [00:51:04]:
Oh my goodness, I would. I tell them all. They all look at me like, I'm crazy. It's like I would find a really clean 2009 Toyota Corolla, really clean. A stick. Even better. I would jump all over that car. And they were like, what? 2009 Toyota Corolla? They're indestructible.

David [00:51:21]:
They give me the point from point A to point B. Ridiculous gas mileage. They don't break down. They're fantastic cars. That's. That's what I tell these people to go out and buy. And they're thinking it's like, well, the new Tahoe is really nice. No, it is hot.

David [00:51:37]:
Garbage. It is hot. Are they nice? Yeah, they're nice. They're nice to get in. It's like, oh, look at all this leather. Or whatever. Everything breaks. Everything breaks.

David [00:51:45]:
Everything's garbage. Everything is garbage. And so my base motivation is to get you to not buy a new car. That's it. I want to get you to drive this shit box that you're driving as long as possible. Because I hate the new cars and you're just making the problem worse by buying something new. So if you bring it to me, I'm going to inspect it and I'm going to tell you everything you need to do to try to keep it on the road as long as possible. And that's my base motivation.

Justin Allen [00:52:15]:
And as cars go to a subscription base. Yeah, it's everything else. It's going to keep disposable.

David [00:52:23]:
The market is sort of rejected that. But dude from California, Ryan, he does the shop acquisition stuff too.

Lucas [00:52:33]:
Tunis.

David [00:52:34]:
Tunisian. Okay. That guy, I would take my shot, my car to hit. Do you know why he brags about his 400,000 mile plus Toyota Sequoia? Yeah, he brags about it. He's like, oh, look how clean my 400,000 mile Toyota is. Takes pictures of it, shows off the odometer. That guy understands it. That guy is going to keep my car on the road.

David [00:52:57]:
He's going to give me a full inspection. He also uses a great shop management system, by the way. I know he's going to show me everything wrong with the car. And he knows I just want to keep this car on the road. That's it. It is gonna tell me at no point is gonna come to me going, hey, man, it's time. It's time for what? Are you gonna make my car payment? Because I don't want to make a car payment. Sign for nothing.

David [00:53:17]:
Fix it.

Lucas [00:53:18]:
I don't know. I'm trying to keep Braxton in the Molotov cocktail at least until I Get the sticker on the back of it. Right. Molotov cocktail. I'm just gonna put that across the back.

David [00:53:29]:
The Kia.

Lucas [00:53:29]:
Yeah.

David [00:53:30]:
Because it ignites.

Lucas [00:53:31]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:53:31]:
Tick, tick, boom.

Lucas [00:53:33]:
Wait. I'm hoping it at least makes it till it does.

David [00:53:36]:
They do catch on fire.

Lucas [00:53:37]:
They have a.

David [00:53:38]:
They have a problem with the fuel lines. They crack and they like they do.

Justin Allen [00:53:42]:
He is to your statement about the shop owners that are doing fine and have the boat and the house and all that kind of stuff. Data is fascinating. Right. Wouldn't it be interesting? Because the idea of whatever, whatever would it take to make them change their mind about anything? I wonder about. I literally wonder about heart attacks and life expectancy of those shop owners. Because what I've seen in my 16 years or so in the field dealing with all the shop owners, which is a slightly, maybe a different perspective perhaps from where you come to it, is those shop owners are under the hood. They're working on the cars all day. A lot of them, not all of them, but let's say a lot of them.

Justin Allen [00:54:18]:
I'd say in my perspective, I'd say you had 20, 25% that fit what you're describing. But there's just a bunch of them that are on the other side.

Lucas [00:54:25]:
On the other side of that that.

Justin Allen [00:54:26]:
Are can't find help, that are none of their kids want to run the business. There's a lot of that going on. That the efficiency could change their lives. And so maybe that's the kind of thing we're trying to let them see because. Yeah, I don't need the training. I'm good. I got it under control. I hear you.

Justin Allen [00:54:41]:
And you're going to check out at 63.

David [00:54:42]:
Yeah.

Justin Allen [00:54:43]:
You know, 68. Like let's. What could we do to make your life a little bit less stressful?

Lucas [00:54:48]:
We've talked a lot about some of the local shop owners near me and we've watched their trajectory and the fact that it's okay now it's time to retire. Now what? Well, I'm gonna sell the shop. Well, it's not worth anything.

Justin Allen [00:55:02]:
Right. Didn't you play that game wrong?

David [00:55:04]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:55:04]:
Who didn't think into where I'm headed. And. And they. A lot of these guys. I know we say this all the time, but a lot of these guys were technicians.

David [00:55:13]:
Oh yeah.

Lucas [00:55:14]:
And so they don't necessarily understand the economics of business.

Justin Allen [00:55:17]:
Right.

Lucas [00:55:17]:
And so then they say, oh, I'm gonna retire. Look at all these snap on tools I bought. Oh yeah. They're worth pennies on the dollar.

Justin Allen [00:55:23]:
Right?

Lucas [00:55:23]:
Right. And so you don't have anything. And if you've not saved and you've not prepared, you've not put money back, right? What do you have? Right. And so unless you build that business to the point that it can generate income without you being there, or that it's profitable enough, you can sell it to be able to sustain yourself. What they say if you're 65, you need a million to make it to 80. Is that what the number is right now?

David [00:55:51]:
I don't know.

Lucas [00:55:52]:
I want to say. They're saying that it's. If you're.

Braxton Critcher [00:55:54]:
I would say that that might be low.

Lucas [00:55:56]:
Yeah, it was like a couple years ago, but they were saying it's 65. You'd need a million to make it to 80. Right. Well, I mean, how many of us are going to sell our shop? And Laura Gay was on. She does the collision shop sales. And Ryan Tunison mentioned this as well, and he said what a lot of shop owners don't think about is, okay, I'm going to sell the shop. Oh, man, if I can just get 2 million, I'll be good. Right? But then they want to buy it unencumbered, so they don't want to buy any debt with it.

Lucas [00:56:24]:
So you have to pay the debt off. Okay, so you got 2 million and you owed 500,000. So you got 1 million and a half. All right, what about taxes? Well, now you got to pay the taxes, and now you got to pay for the environmental, and you got to pay for the inspection, and you got to pay for. And these people are walking out with 800,000 saying, well, that wasn't worth it. Right? I'm not gonna get. I'm not gonna get to 80 on this. And so they go back to work.

Lucas [00:56:53]:
And, you know, their point was, is, hey, you probably need to have a consultant help you navigate that and prepare. And, you know, that's one of the things that the Institute's doing now is that they start coaching the people. You say, hey, I need to know 10 years before you want to retire. And If I know 10 years before you want to retire, you can retire in a really good place as opposed to, uh, oh, now I have to think about all these variables. And, you know, I was talking to Michael from the Institute a while back, and that's what he said is. He said, man, he said, five years is cutting it close. Ten years is ideal. Five years is cutting it close.

Lucas [00:57:29]:
A year to get the most for your business and get the value out of your business. He said, it's Impossible, Right? And so these shop owners, we've met them, yeah, they're making it right to like, oh, I've got cancer. Oh, I had a heart attack. Now I need to sell it. Like, right now it's going to be a fire sale. They're not getting anything for it.

Braxton Critcher [00:57:48]:
Is it like you were saying, cars, people, you don't think plan out when they want to get rid of their car? Do people not think ahead a little bit to, hey, at this age, I might want to be thinking about retirement? Like, they don't. Like, that doesn't happen.

Lucas [00:58:03]:
You know, I think of my dad, right? And you know my dad pretty well. And my dad's whole mindset and mentality for all these years was is he loved working. He never had a reason or a desire or something that said, I need to retire. Right? There was never anything there that said that. Now he's made it up in years. And my brother took over one business I'm running in part of the property, and we're okay. But had something happened to my dad at 45, had something happened to my dad at 60, man, we'd have been in hot garbage mess. I mean, it would have been bad.

Lucas [00:58:39]:
But he didn't, thankfully. And so he was able to take those last however many years in his life that he was going to be working and be in business and navigate this thing to where it worked for the rest of the family. But what if he hadn't have had that?

Justin Allen [00:58:54]:
Right?

Lucas [00:58:55]:
And so, like, I think about myself and, you know, I kind of felt shady for my team primarily, but I kind of felt shady when I started thinking, okay, I need to be planning retirement. That felt weird. It felt like, why? Well, it felt like, oh, well, I'm not planning on selling out. I'm not going to sell them out. I'm never going to get to the point that I don't want to work. I'm never going to. And then through the podcast and through the association and our friendship and seeing the things that we've seen, start seeing all these people that they weren't given the option. To me, it felt shady because, oh, well, we might sell the shop, right? Let's look at all the options.

Lucas [00:59:36]:
We might sell the shop. Well, I wouldn't sell it out from underneath my employees. That wouldn't be right. Or, hey, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be an employer that doesn't come to work every day. Right? It felt weird to me. And maybe because that's the way my parents are, my dad still works Every single day. My mom was working two weeks before she was put in the hospital.

Lucas [00:59:55]:
Right?

David [00:59:56]:
Yeah. But coming to work is not the same thing as being there running the shop. That's not the same thing. Like, I don't. I don't run the shop at all. I'm there for an hour and a half in the mornings, maybe an hour. And that.

Lucas [01:00:07]:
The shop would not be in business still if you ran the shop. I think we all know.

Justin Allen [01:00:12]:
Thank goodness.

David [01:00:12]:
It's plugging along. It's plugging along. But my point is, like, I don't want to put any effort into the shop. It's. I don't. It's there, it's doing its thing. It's whatever.

Braxton Critcher [01:00:23]:
Just do not.

Lucas [01:00:25]:
I mean, it's all in water.

David [01:00:27]:
I want to focus my energy in different things. That's what I'm saying. If I were really like.

Lucas [01:00:33]:
Like, naps. Video games.

David [01:00:35]:
Naps and video. I don't like to play video games during the day.

Braxton Critcher [01:00:38]:
It's reading blogs online.

David [01:00:39]:
Yeah, yeah. Reading. Reading is okay. YouTube videos. That's okay, too.

Lucas [01:00:44]:
Anyway, he's like a personal AI bot. If you ask a question, he'll go do all the research for you.

Braxton Critcher [01:00:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Allen [01:00:50]:
Let me tell you all about that.

Braxton Critcher [01:00:52]:
I'm sure he's wanting to wrap this up right now so we can go back. Oh, yeah?

David [01:00:56]:
For what?

Braxton Critcher [01:00:57]:
To go read and do research about what, exactly?

Lucas [01:01:02]:
You don't.

Braxton Critcher [01:01:02]:
You don't know. You just open the phone and just start doing research.

David [01:01:05]:
No, no, no. Something's got to pique my interest, and then I'll go down the rabbit hole.

Lucas [01:01:08]:
Yeah. And you're not very interested in Braxton.

David [01:01:10]:
Sorry. We haven't done anything.

Braxton Critcher [01:01:12]:
There's nothing out there about me anyway, so.

Lucas [01:01:14]:
Good. So. Well, there wasn't until. Anyway.

David [01:01:19]:
I don't. I'm not planning my retirement, like, through the business. Like, I'm not gonna sell that thing. Are you kidding me? That thing's a dumpster fire. Like, I'm just gonna liquidate and tell everybody they're fired and that's it. I think everybody kind of knows that. They kind of know that. But here's what I have done, is I have made sure that I'm investing money so that I do have something saved back.

David [01:01:44]:
That's not the business. And I have told all of my employees that they have to do the same thing. Like, some of it is forced, some of it is voluntary. But I've told them all, hey, you all need to be millionaires by 50. Something like. That's the Plan, because here's how you do it. They're young. They're all young, right? So I wish somebody when I was 28 or whatever had come to me and said, hey, you need to start dumping 100, 150, $200 a week into an account and have it just grow with the market.

David [01:02:15]:
Because when you're 55, you could keep working. Or if I just come in one day and say, hey, either go find another job or retire because I'm closing this place, you won't give two craps because you'll be sitting on a million and a half. What are you going to care? That's how I've made sure you feel bad about now showing to work because your parents work ethic. Go find something else to do. Go work at something else. That's what I do. I just go do something else. I don't want to work.

David [01:02:43]:
Can you shop?

Lucas [01:02:44]:
Can you really define anything you do as work?

David [01:02:47]:
It's not, it's fun for me. So it's not really work. See?

Braxton Critcher [01:02:51]:
And I don't think people are going to get mad at you.

Lucas [01:02:54]:
No, I mean, I'm sure, like if.

Braxton Critcher [01:02:56]:
You say, okay, I've done this for X amount of years, it's time for me to retire, I'm going to sell the shop. There's nobody to define it that way.

David [01:03:03]:
It's, it's more like you're just handing the reins over to a manager and you're like, hey, this is the way we do things. This is our process. Just execute on it and then that's it.

Lucas [01:03:15]:
One of the things that I keep talking about and keep seeing is that many, many, many owners find a service advisor or a manager that will run the shop. You're very much in this boat and they find that person and the stress comes off for 10 minutes, right? They let them go in there and work and they don't have to worry about it, they don't have to deal with it. And they bail, right? They just absolutely bail. And so they're like, here you go. Mike Allen did that. And he'll, he'll openly tell you that.

Braxton Critcher [01:03:45]:
Who bails? The owner.

David [01:03:46]:
The owner, right?

Lucas [01:03:47]:
Because the pressure's been so high for so long. That breath of fresh air to be able to like, oh, I can leave and go get lunch. Holy cow, you don't know what to do with this is overwhelming. And so, you know, Mike and I were talking about that and he's like, man. And it was a wake up call for me, right? Big wake up call. And I really was thinking at that point in time, okay, do I keep doing this, or do I completely restructure and reimagine how we're doing business? It's one of the reasons that I hired Chris, and I had been planning on hiring a manager, finding that right person, putting that in place for a while now, because I was talking to Mike, and Mike said, I have been an absentee owner. I had turned everything over to these other people. And then one day I came back and I realized, oh, no, it's not what we've expected it to be.

Lucas [01:04:34]:
We're not realizing our potential. Things are a mess. And he went from no involvement to back on the counter overnight. And that, to me, sounds miserable.

Justin Allen [01:04:45]:
Yeah. Nobody had set expectations.

David [01:04:47]:
That's because you're either guiding the ship and you're there setting the expectation and then coaching them up to meet that expectation, or you don't care, and you bring your expectation levels way down.

Braxton Critcher [01:05:03]:
Yeah, there's gotta be a big.

David [01:05:04]:
Is it on fire? No. Good. Call me if it does. And then that's it. It can't be like, I'm gonna completely walk away, and then it's gonna come back and be exactly what I want it to be. That's insane.

Lucas [01:05:17]:
Of course it is. And, you know, in Mike's defense, we were really working on the shopping cart wheel balancing strategies and trying to get that off the ground.

David [01:05:25]:
And so I'm not trying to disparage Mike. I'm saying that that' they think that, oh, everything's great. Okay, peace out. And they come back, and this isn't what I wanted. Everybody's fired. I'm gonna have to start all over. What? No. Like, you caused this because they didn't know what direction to go in.

Braxton Critcher [01:05:43]:
The hour and a half that you spend at your shop keeps the culture.

David [01:05:48]:
No, no. My expectations are way.

Braxton Critcher [01:05:50]:
You don't. You don't care.

David [01:05:52]:
Right.

Justin Allen [01:05:53]:
If it catches on fire, call me.

Braxton Critcher [01:05:55]:
Wow.

Lucas [01:05:55]:
He's got videos of employees snoring in the back. Right. And, like, he doesn't even try and wake him up. He's just like, okay, this is gonna be like a funny social reel. And then he just leaves.

David [01:06:06]:
That's a Juan problem. He has to deal with that, not me. My expectation is let's make sure that we take care of our customers in a certain manner, and let's make sure that we take care of each other in a certain manner. And so, like, an employee sleeping in the bathroom is a problem because, like, you're letting the rest of the team down. Like, Everybody else is working. What are you doing? You're sleeping in the bathroom. That's a problem. We need to fix this.

David [01:06:32]:
But it's not a. Everything needs to be exactly the way I want it to be. No, that's impossible. If I wanted it that way, I would be in there every single day. They know the expectation level. And I'm not saying that there isn't course correction. There is constant course correction. But that's it.

David [01:06:51]:
It's course correction. Hey, let's kind of steer a little bit to the left. Okay. Come back.

Braxton Critcher [01:06:55]:
It's not a little bit too far.

David [01:06:56]:
Yeah. It's not changing course all of a sudden. It's like everybody kind of knows what we need to do and we just execute on it. And if there's a problem, which course. Correct. That's it. And you just let it go.

Braxton Critcher [01:07:07]:
So.

David [01:07:07]:
And it is what it is.

Braxton Critcher [01:07:09]:
Lucas, how do you think you're going to do? Because you've never really had somebody that runs day to day. It's always good for the guy.

Lucas [01:07:15]:
I had. I had Shannon for a while and Shannon did a really good job. And I checked out too much with Shannon. And then what I did with Shannon was I checked out and then I came back and tried to force my hand.

Braxton Critcher [01:07:29]:
He wasn't even really there but a year.

Lucas [01:07:31]:
No, he was there for two years.

Braxton Critcher [01:07:32]:
Was okay.

David [01:07:33]:
Yeah.

Lucas [01:07:33]:
He was there for two years. I think that this new person is very much like me in a lot of ways. And I think he's. We connected at a different level. On top of that, I am really working hard with Rena and with Cecil. So Rena is the service advisor coach and the manager coach and Cecil is my coach. And so I am working really hard with Cecil to build systems and put things in place that ensure he's successful. I'm really nervous about it.

Lucas [01:08:09]:
I'm not gonna lie. I'm nervous because I know I do this. David fucks at me all the time. Like, just leave it alone, dude. Like, get away from it. I mean, how many times did you see me check our numbers and check to make sure the shop was doing. It was supposed to yesterday from here.

Braxton Critcher [01:08:23]:
Yeah. Well, that's kind of why I asked because. So Eric Schmidt from Schmidt Autocare, he. He said, you know, when he hired his ops guy. Eric is the kind of guy that likes. He is hands on.

Lucas [01:08:35]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:08:35]:
And he wants to make sure things run just how he wants them to. He's kind of that kind of guy. And I feel like that's you.

Lucas [01:08:42]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:08:42]:
And so he Said it was really hard when he hired his ops guy to just let it run because he wants it, you know, just, just so.

Lucas [01:08:51]:
But it's not even for me. It's not even that I'm unwilling to just let it be. Right. I'm willing to just let it be. I'm willing to let them do it their way. The things I'm nervous about are like making changes that take us a more transactional direction and saying, hey, we're not going to do as thorough of an inspection. Hey, we're not going to do this quality control thing. We're not going to do the things that make us us.

Lucas [01:09:12]:
Right, Right. That's nerve wracking.

Braxton Critcher [01:09:14]:
Yeah. That's why you got to get the right ops guy.

Lucas [01:09:16]:
The other fear that I have, yes.

David [01:09:18]:
It's more that he needs some. The very, very specific about what the core values of the business are. And like these five things that we do define us. We can't change those.

Lucas [01:09:29]:
Yeah.

David [01:09:29]:
And then everything else is insulin.

Lucas [01:09:32]:
However you want to, however you want to make it work. The other thing is, is that, I mean, you see the relationships, both of you on a fairly.

Braxton Critcher [01:09:44]:
I'm have to change clothes again. See, I told you. Every hour I got to change out.

Lucas [01:09:48]:
Look, I'm just proud of you. We've made it this whole episode and you've only bit your fingernails two times. Have you noticed every single video he does, he's biting his fingernails in the video.

Braxton Critcher [01:09:57]:
I thought about that, getting onto this, this episode. I was like, I got. I got to keep it down. I got to not do that the whole time. It's a thing.

Justin Allen [01:10:03]:
Got to keep my hands out of my mouth. You might make note cards if you. Whatever.

Braxton Critcher [01:10:07]:
I have been messing with this one, this one hang nail that's kind of bothering me. If anybody has any fingernail clippers, that'd be fantastic. But I'm starting to bleed now. Now I gotta change my skirt because I just spilled water.

David [01:10:22]:
There's water, blood, everything.

Lucas [01:10:25]:
So. But, but you know.

Braxton Critcher [01:10:26]:
Wow, look at this. Oh, logo placement too.

Justin Allen [01:10:30]:
Hey, look at that.

David [01:10:30]:
What?

Lucas [01:10:31]:
Look at there. He's gonna lose his finger with that. You know, he's. He's not a very.

Justin Allen [01:10:35]:
He thought he was bleeding before. Wait till you see this.

David [01:10:37]:
Here we go.

Lucas [01:10:38]:
But you both have seen my engagement with my employees and I'm really close to my employees and so I'm. It's a little nerve wracking being that I am putting somebody between me and them. Right. And I've. I have made a promise to Cecil and I have made a promise to the manager that they're going to go to him, not to me.

David [01:10:58]:
I need to tell you this, Lucas. They didn't tell you this part. They should have. You're gonna need to look for new employees.

Lucas [01:11:05]:
I know, right?

David [01:11:07]:
I'm not being facetious.

Lucas [01:11:08]:
I was gonna hire you.

David [01:11:10]:
They're not. They came to work for you, and now they have to go talk to somebody else. The first thing they're gonna do is circumvent. And then when you tell them they can't circumvent, they're gonna attempt. And if that guy is not Lucas, or the way Lucas would react or the way Lucas does things, they are going to either become so covert, hostile, or they're gonna quit.

Lucas [01:11:36]:
Well, we're gonna talk about it.

Braxton Critcher [01:11:37]:
You know, the Santa Claus talking three. The Santa Claus three with Tim Allen.

Justin Allen [01:11:43]:
The robot Santa Claus. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:11:44]:
Just make it robot. They'll never know it's you.

David [01:11:48]:
It's not about. I'm not saying everybody. I'm not saying everybody. There might be an employer or two that. That, you know, I just roll with the punches. I could see an Eric. Eric is easy enough going. I think that he would.

Lucas [01:12:00]:
Eric, George and Justin are no problem.

David [01:12:02]:
Yeah, George. George is super cool.

Lucas [01:12:04]:
I think Noah's going to be fine. I know Jackals is going to be fine.

Braxton Critcher [01:12:07]:
Terry would be cool.

Lucas [01:12:09]:
I think Terry's going to struggle a.

Braxton Critcher [01:12:10]:
Little bit, actually worked, by the way.

Lucas [01:12:12]:
I think Terry's going to struggle with this.

David [01:12:14]:
Terry. I don't know. Terry likes you that much, so I think Terry would. I think Terry might do better under somebody with more structure, and you know what I'm saying?

Lucas [01:12:24]:
For sure. And I have. I think about that often that I have backed off of the structure and I have backed off some of the things that we should be doing as a business because I care about them. And I've let it slide to the point that, like, some things aren't as they should be and the expectations aren't being met, even though they were set, even though they're on paper, even though we've communicated them over and over again. Well, he's not going to do anything about it. Right now. We have a chance to kind of reset that a little bit. So I don't doubt that that might happen with some people.

Lucas [01:12:55]:
Right. I don't want it to happen. I love my entire team, but I understand that that's a potential.

Justin Allen [01:13:00]:
Yeah. The culture is built around your personality.

David [01:13:03]:
Yeah. Right. And that's exactly what it is.

Justin Allen [01:13:05]:
Right.

David [01:13:06]:
So when you've created.

Justin Allen [01:13:07]:
That is tough. And it's the same would be true about your customer base also.

David [01:13:13]:
Right.

Justin Allen [01:13:13]:
Like, they oftentimes they've come because they loved your energy. They come to that front desk. They get to talk to you. They know Lucas has got me. And when Lucas isn't there, what do you do? So, yeah, that'll be an evolution. You'll figure that out too, for sure.

Lucas [01:13:24]:
And it'll be okay no matter what. You know, I still plan to be there. I still enjoy being there. But it's that. And, you know, we go back to that retirement conversation. I don't want to have an organization that if something happens to me, I have a heart attack tomorrow.

Justin Allen [01:13:42]:
Right.

Lucas [01:13:43]:
Something happens.

Justin Allen [01:13:43]:
It's dependent upon you.

Lucas [01:13:44]:
That it's 100% dependent on you, especially.

Braxton Critcher [01:13:46]:
How much travel you do, the travel, you know, other obligations with your family. I mean.

Lucas [01:13:51]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:13:52]:
Being able to take a day and not have your phone blow up because texts have questions.

Lucas [01:13:58]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [01:13:58]:
That's a big deal.

Lucas [01:13:59]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:13:59]:
You know, and it needs to happen. I mean, it's. It's long overdue.

David [01:14:02]:
I feel like.

Lucas [01:14:03]:
Yeah, yeah, it does. And like, I was sharing with Chris. I have a really unhealthy relationship with voicemails on the weekends and with Google reviews. It doesn't like it can be a good one. And I just see that I have a Google review and my heart jumps.

David [01:14:19]:
Out of my chest, goes away.

Lucas [01:14:21]:
I'm not going to. I'm going to give the account to him and I'm going to let him get the emails because I don't want to.

David [01:14:25]:
I thought we were supposed to give it to auto shop, follow up. Because we talked about it on the podcast. We're like, hey, can you guys handle this? And they're like, poor Mike. No, no, no. I'd be great. They're going to answer them.

Lucas [01:14:39]:
Like, no, I'm just saying they're going.

David [01:14:40]:
To send me like, hey, how do you want me to handle this one? This one bad one came.

Lucas [01:14:44]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [01:14:45]:
Both of you guys signed up for that, right?

Lucas [01:14:46]:
I've been on that for you. Well, I hate.

David [01:14:48]:
No, we both have it. But he not. I'm going to handle your Google reviews for you, and I don't have to mess with it.

Lucas [01:14:54]:
I was only saying poor Mike because of the. Because of the trampoline park discussion. I've listened back to that. That's pretty rough.

David [01:15:01]:
Yeah, it is.

Lucas [01:15:03]:
Okay.