Changing The Industry Podcast

David Roman [00:00:04]:
Go ahead and put. Grab your headphones. Put them on. You too, Lucas.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:07]:
I'll do what I can, Deb.

David Roman [00:00:11]:
I'm gonna drink my D. Mountain Dew. My headphones fall off.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:24]:
Who was it that we recorded with that kept losing their headphones a while back?

David Roman [00:00:28]:
I don't remember. That doesn't sound like something that happened. I believe you.

Michael Doherty [00:00:33]:
I just kept falling off or.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:36]:
Yeah, they kept falling off. Oh, it was the remote service advisor.

David Roman [00:00:42]:
We had a remote service advisor.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:44]:
Right. Yeah.

David Roman [00:00:45]:
Remember?

Lucas Underwood [00:00:45]:
She was. Mine's completely blank right now.

David Roman [00:00:49]:
Oh, man.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:50]:
In Arizona. At Phoenix. In Phoenix. Because she had, like, really long hair and they kept sliding off.

David Roman [00:00:58]:
Oh, yeah, Yeah, I remember.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:00]:
Anyway, have you met Michael yet?

David Roman [00:01:03]:
I just did.

Michael Doherty [00:01:04]:
Just know.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:05]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:01:06]:
I'm Michael.

Michael Doherty [00:01:07]:
How you doing? Do you have a shop as well?

David Roman [00:01:09]:
Yeah, something like that.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:11]:
Oh, okay. Well, I mean, his employees have a shop.

David Roman [00:01:14]:
My employees are at a shop, and I am liable for the taxes at that shop.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:21]:
Of all the things that you would think that you would be okay being.

David Roman [00:01:25]:
Liable for, I'm not okay with it. I'm not okay with it at all. That's just the way it works. And you have to now file with the government to let them know that nobody else is even kind of an owner on that business. That LLC filing thing.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:42]:
Yeah, the beneficiary or whatever.

David Roman [00:01:46]:
Yeah. Well, they want to make sure that everybody's paying their fair share, whatever garbage want to push out.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:53]:
David hates taxes.

David Roman [00:01:55]:
I hate them so much.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:56]:
Michael's a service advisor.

David Roman [00:01:58]:
Yeah, Michael. Taxes too.

Michael Doherty [00:02:01]:
Absolutely.

David Roman [00:02:02]:
Yeah. I don't know anybody that. That likes taxes.

Michael Doherty [00:02:06]:
I mean, the people that do your tax return every year, I mean.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:08]:
Yeah, they like taxes.

David Roman [00:02:11]:
No, because they still have to pay them too. I don't think they're having.

Michael Doherty [00:02:16]:
I'm sure they know some exit strategies that just not telling their clients about. So they don't pay some loopholes.

David Roman [00:02:21]:
No, these are W2 employees. I mean, they're looking at their paychecks and going, huh, that was a big chunk they took out. I just worked some overtime, and that was a big chunk they took out. Or I just got a raise.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:32]:
The more I make, the more they get.

David Roman [00:02:34]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:02:35]:
So is it better to have a business and pay the employees on payroll or have them as subcontractors?

David Roman [00:02:42]:
You can't do subcon. That's illegal.

Michael Doherty [00:02:44]:
Oh, okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:45]:
Yeah. A lot of shops still try to do it, but you can't. Like, you can't do it.

David Roman [00:02:49]:
The. And I don't know of any state that is loosey goosey enough that you can get away with subcontracting that work. Now, the only legit way to do it is that you have a building, a space, and that you've got five to ten mobile mechanics that whenever the car shows up, you call your Rolodex of mobile mechanics. And whoever shows up, shows up and they do the work for the day. And then that person is not obligated to be there the next day. If that person is obligated to be there and they have their own P and L and they invoice your business and then you then in turn mark it up and sell it. That that would be the only legit way to do subcontractor 1099 work through a shop. If it's not that and they're showing up to work because their tools are in your building, they're not 1099 employees, and you have to pay payroll taxes on that.

Lucas Underwood [00:03:52]:
And people like shop owners will get mad at us for saying that. But it's a.

David Roman [00:03:57]:
Who's getting mad at us for saying that?

Lucas Underwood [00:03:59]:
I got some flack a while back because we said it in an episode and it's true. Well, I know it's true.

David Roman [00:04:05]:
If you're doing it, you're doing something illegal and you're gonna make whatever state agency is monitoring you look at you more deeply and. And better not be in Kansas, because then they're going to start looking at everything I do. I'm all on the up.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:21]:
Yeah, this person was in Kansas.

Michael Doherty [00:04:22]:
What type of shop do you have? Curiosity. European domestic fixed cars. What type of cars?

David Roman [00:04:31]:
Any kind.

Michael Doherty [00:04:32]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:33]:
Okay. Now, so check this out. David never calls his clients. Okay. Never. They don't call their clients. All they do is see the vehicle. When the client comes in, they put in what's wrong with the car.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:47]:
They build the estimates based on a dvi. They do, and then they send it to the client and they're like, here you go.

David Roman [00:04:53]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:55]:
No notes, no nothing. Just no.

David Roman [00:04:56]:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, we put lots of notes in there. We just don't call them.

Michael Doherty [00:05:02]:
Yeah, we got shopware. We do a lot of text and email and stuff like that.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:06]:
See, he fits in so well with us. He's got shopware. He worked for one of our best friends. Who? Brian Walker.

David Roman [00:05:14]:
Brian Walker, Shop marketing?

Lucas Underwood [00:05:16]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:05:17]:
Yeah. I was a service advisor for him for a couple of years.

David Roman [00:05:20]:
At a shop.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:20]:
Yep.

David Roman [00:05:21]:
Oh, wow, that's cool.

Michael Doherty [00:05:22]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:23]:
And he works right here.

David Roman [00:05:25]:
Where? Here in this building?

Lucas Underwood [00:05:28]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:05:29]:
They don't have AC in the hallway.

Michael Doherty [00:05:30]:
I've got about 20 minutes and I gotta Start serving lunch for you guys.

David Roman [00:05:32]:
So they don't have AC in the hallway.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:35]:
Yeah, it is pretty warm out there.

David Roman [00:05:37]:
And the elevators, you don't know if it's going to work or not.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:41]:
I got on the first elevator and went up. It's helping somebody move stuff. And she asked me, she said, hey, you want a high floor or low floor? And I said, can I get floor one, please? And she said, oh, you've been on the elevator. And I said, I have. She's like, yeah, the one on the far right. You don't want to take it. She's like, make sure you push the button again. Wait for the other one.

Michael Doherty [00:06:01]:
So do you guys both do shopware? Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:03]:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:06:04]:
We used to have WinWorx. Oh, and then. Right. Actually, literally, probably March, April of 2020, when Covid rolled out. Yeah, we switched over to shopware and kind of got acclimated to it. And it was a little bit of a learning curve. But I love the ability that you can send someone the link and they have to approve it. Like, it's not.

Michael Doherty [00:06:24]:
It's not a. It's not a contestable.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:27]:
Right.

Michael Doherty [00:06:27]:
They have to click approve or decline.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:29]:
Did you see they added new features that you can even go as far as to say, hey, I have to have your telephone number and your name. Like, when they approve, they now they have to enter who they are.

Michael Doherty [00:06:40]:
Oh, really?

Lucas Underwood [00:06:40]:
They can't. It's not just like, hey, I went to this webpage and clicked this button to approve, they have to put in their telephone number. They have to do a text verification that says, like, hey, this is really who I am. This is really my telephone number.

David Roman [00:06:52]:
I like that.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:52]:
And so, like, because we had people, even though all of that happened and even though you had the authorization, we had people who came back and said, no, I didn't do that. I didn't know that's what we were doing. And the most recent one that I can think of, I handled this myself. And there's always room for improvement. And I've gone back and I've listened to the call to make sure. I went to this man and I said, listen, as a starting place, I have to replace the injection pump on this truck. I can't do anything else. It was leaking at the halves of the pump, and so fuel was pouring out of it.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:27]:
And I said, I have to replace the injection pump. That's just what it is. I said, they found some other things with automobile. We can go over those things. I went down the list line by line and Even at the end. So, like, when I build an estimate in shopware, if it's an oil leak evaluation, if it's a brake evaluation, the title of the job is Complete Break System Evaluation Dash. This service will come with additional estimates. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:54]:
And so I send it to him, and he approves everything on the ticket. Every single thing on the ticket. Approved all of it. $9,000. So it took forever to get the parts. It was a whole thing.

David Roman [00:08:06]:
You stop, you call the customer. I did said, hey, this includes inspections. There's going to be additional work.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:15]:
I did.

David Roman [00:08:16]:
So we're going to start here, not do anything else and call you so we can discuss.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:23]:
I did that.

David Roman [00:08:24]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:24]:
And then. And we. We agreed that we were going to do the evaluations, we'd get the pump in, and I'd call him with estimates. And then when I called him back, he said, whoa, whoa, I didn't know anything about this. And I'm like, no, no, no. I want to make sure. And so I told him, I said, I'm going to go back and listen to the calls. He's like, oh, you don't need to do that.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:42]:
And up to that point, I don't think he realized that we recorded calls. But all of a sudden, he changed his whole tune when I said that. But he was getting ready to say no. I didn't know there were additional estimates, Even though it's all over the repair order. Even though I called him to say that. Even though I called him to set the timeframe. And so the fact that they have to type in their telephone number because we've even had people say no, that wasn't me that approved that. Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:09]:
Did you just think that you were gonna, like, get repairs for free by saying no? I didn't actually do that.

David Roman [00:09:14]:
Well, yeah, I don't. I don't know what they. They think I got that accusation, too. Somebody look at that.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:20]:
Look at this dude out here sipping on this drink. You see the way he's sipping on that? Oh, now there's a big dude putting his hands around his neck.

David Roman [00:09:28]:
You know, people watching the podcast have no idea what you're talking about.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:31]:
I know. So Braxton loves very feminine drinks, and that's okay.

David Roman [00:09:35]:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Whoa. It is 2024. You can't be calling them feminine.

Michael Doherty [00:09:39]:
What do you say? It was a caramel frappe latte, something.

David Roman [00:09:41]:
Something, something with a twist.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:43]:
But the way he. The way he drinks it is special. Then he, like, looks at Dave and says, stop it.

Michael Doherty [00:09:51]:
You know? You know, I feel like I Feel like it needs a pink straw.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:56]:
It does, yes.

David Roman [00:09:58]:
It's 2024. Anything can be whatever you want it to be.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:02]:
We just know it's trouble when you look up and he's biting his fingernails in the glass up here, you know?

David Roman [00:10:07]:
Yeah, he does that, though.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:09]:
He does every episode.

Michael Doherty [00:10:10]:
Every.

David Roman [00:10:11]:
Chews them off.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:12]:
Yeah, dude. Every episode. He's. He's in a, like a. What I would consider a high value, very important episode. And I'm watching back on YouTube and Braxton's, and he's not even, like, listening to him. I call him later, I'm like, dude, what the f? He's like, dude, I was just so nervous. I knew it was, like, really important.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:32]:
He's like, I didn't realize that the camera cut to me when I was.

David Roman [00:10:34]:
Biting my fingernails, man. Yeah, don't do that.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:39]:
Yeah. Juno, he's our new Service Advisor podcast host.

David Roman [00:10:45]:
I found out. Congratulations.

Michael Doherty [00:10:47]:
I appreciate that very much. I really wanted to express how excited I am about the opportunities.

David Roman [00:10:58]:
You sound excited. Let me tell you, buddy. You sound so excited. I've never heard excited. Where'd you find this person? You just pick up random people and go, hey, you have a podcast now? I do, yes. Yep, yep.

Michael Doherty [00:11:15]:
So Chris Cowton with autofix, he had actually heard a podcast that I did with Brian and Kim for Shop Marketing Pros.

David Roman [00:11:23]:
Oh, okay.

Michael Doherty [00:11:23]:
And it expressed interest in wanting to work with me and doing some Service Advisor training and whatnot. And I guess it's evolved into starting off with a podcast and kind of growing from there. So I just did one with Jeff.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:39]:
What'd you think of that, by the way? That's probably, like, your first. Really.

Michael Doherty [00:11:45]:
Rude, very insightful, full of knowledge, and one of the reasons I'm excited to be here today. And I am excited as I get to surround myself with people that know more than me. And I feel like in order to grow, you have to do that and be aligned. And it's just. It's kind of surreal to be here.

David Roman [00:12:04]:
Probably in the wrong room, buddy. I don't know what. No more than you. Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:09]:
There's very few people in this particular room that would know more than you. We're kind of hacks. We're definitely.

David Roman [00:12:16]:
We are definitely hacks. Not you. I'm doing well for yourself. You got a big, big red building. It's a barn. It's a nice building. You ever seen this building?

Michael Doherty [00:12:25]:
No.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:26]:
Beautiful. It's nice.

David Roman [00:12:27]:
That's really nice.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:29]:
My parents were, like, the major helping factor in that, in that they had.

David Roman [00:12:34]:
The land yeah, yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:36]:
I'm paying for it though. So, you know, I was talking to Jeff about it.

David Roman [00:12:41]:
You know what keeps popping up on my feed is today, like on this day kind of thing. Right. And it was a, it was you like starting to level out the.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:54]:
Oh yeah, yeah.

David Roman [00:12:56]:
He did his own general contracting. Yeah, he was out on with a bad back, his back's hurting. He would climb up into the bulldozer and he'd sit there and level ground out.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:08]:
There's no greater job than running a dozer. It's like the best thing ever. And it was like, I just about shut the shop down and like said.

David Roman [00:13:15]:
I'm just telling you. You're like, what should I be doing? I don't want to not go to the shop every day. It's like, dude, cool, be a bulldozer driver guy or whatever. I don't know, start a business where you like, hey, you meet a level watcher, you could, you don't need the money. So it's like, it's just something to keep you entertained.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:34]:
It's kind of like the wrecker business though. I've got a friend who owns a bunch of equipment and got friends who own record companies. And I was talking to Toby a while back and he said, do you know how to become a multimillionaire in the record business? And I said no. He said, start with 10 million and don't worry, you'll be down to 2 in no time at all.

David Roman [00:13:52]:
Yeah, I'm not saying like you own a bunch of equipment, but you could have a bulldozer on a trailer. You have like 8,000 trucks. So you just pick one of the trucks, get it running and then haul it to the job. And you know, you could be a subcontractor. And for the day you sit there and, and then out the door you go, yeah, bulldoze stuff.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:14]:
I mean, or. You ever ran a piece of equipment before?

David Roman [00:14:19]:
No, never.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:19]:
Or I'm fixing that next time you come to the house.

David Roman [00:14:22]:
I don't want, I don't want to break anything.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:24]:
No, dude, it's so awesome. Eric, that works for me. One of the technicians. There's big equipment, then there's little equipment. And so the equipment that we keep around all the time, like we've had big equipment and I've ran big equipment. But the equipment that we keep, that we always own is like small, like mini size track hose, stuff like that. And the problem with mini equipment is is that like, especially if it's tracked like it, they're, they're not exactly as stable. And so if like you get the tracks up in there, anything will like slam down.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:56]:
But when it's a hundred thousand pounds when it slams down, it's more gradual. Like it comes down gently. And so we, we had one of the little track hose up on the hill and he had the boom all the way up on it, like folded as high up as it would go. And we're all sitting there, we've been up there shooting. And I said, hey, Eric, bring the trackhoe down. And so he starts walking it up and all but about this much track is in the air. And so we all just sit there and watch Eric. Thankfully the window is shut because he'd have killed himself otherwise.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:25]:
But he goes up and when this thing comes down like it's. They slam forward, right? And Eric slams up. And all you see is Eric like face first smashed against the window. Handprints face.

David Roman [00:15:36]:
They have seatbelts, don't they?

Lucas Underwood [00:15:40]:
What?

David Roman [00:15:41]:
They have seatbelts. I'm pretty sure they have seatbelts.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:44]:
What's a seatbelt?

David Roman [00:15:47]:
You know, you could open one of those businesses where they have the land and they have those pieces of equipment set up.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:55]:
Yeah. See?

David Roman [00:15:56]:
And then let the kids come play on it. Yeah, not kids. You.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:59]:
Yeah, that'd be good.

David Roman [00:16:00]:
Grown ass men that want to be children and what are like. I remember playing with the Tonka trucks and you can sit there and.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:09]:
I mean, you want to open a Mac and cheese truck, though.

David Roman [00:16:12]:
That's practical, that's pragmatic.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:14]:
I'm just saying though, I mean, like, I'm concerned. I'm really concerned for the general public. The first person who complains about his Mac and cheese is probably going to get shot.

David Roman [00:16:24]:
That'll be on the bottom of the thing. We'll say no refunds.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:27]:
Yeah. Will you go and like ask Christie to shoot him? I hear she's a way better shot than you are.

David Roman [00:16:32]:
She's a very good shot. But they're gonna come back and complain. I don't like it. It's like, I'm sorry. You see the sign that says no refunds. Throw it away. Don't come back.

Michael Doherty [00:16:42]:
I don't know where it is in the United States, but someone's got just a grilled cheese.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:46]:
Yeah. Truck.

Michael Doherty [00:16:47]:
It's all they do is grilled cheese.

David Roman [00:16:49]:
Oh, there's a bunch of them like that. It had a really goofy name. That's what cheese said or something like that instead of what she said. That's slick.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:00]:
That's like.

David Roman [00:17:01]:
But see, the problem with those places like that is. I started to get too fancy. There's a. There's a fish and chips food truck. It's a. It's a franchise, I think now. I think it's called hook and reel or something like that.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:13]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:17:14]:
They're never in one spot, so they announce where they're going to be for the day. And they go kind of go all over the Kansas City metro area. They're all over the country, but they only have fish and fries. Do you want just fish? Do you want just fries or do you want both? That's it. They don't have anything else. And they are fantastic. 10 out of 10 delicious. What?

Lucas Underwood [00:17:44]:
You stress me out.

David Roman [00:17:47]:
That would be a good business for you. I'm just saying.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:49]:
I just couldn't imagine you running a fryer.

David Roman [00:17:53]:
Mac and cheese truck.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:54]:
Yeah. You don't have to have fried Mac and cheese balls.

David Roman [00:17:57]:
No, no. You sound like my kids. They're like throwing ideas. I mean, you could have this kind of. No, no. We have red, we have yellow slop with noodles. And then I'll have a fancy version with, you know, we'll throw some ground beef in it. Yeah, some ground beef on top or some pulled pork or like, hey, we'll sprinkle some hot sauce on top for the day.

David Roman [00:18:20]:
That's the fancy Mac. And what's the fancy Mac and cheese today? Pulled pork. You want it? No, take regular. It's. Of course you did. Basic ass.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:33]:
A while back, there was a discussion in Reddit, and I don't know how much you spend any time on Reddit.

David Roman [00:18:40]:
It is a cesspool.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:41]:
It is. It's terrible. But there's a service advisor subreddit, Right. And it's got some really interesting perspectives. It's got independent and dealer advisors. Primarily dealer advisors in it. And they were saying that there was a question and it asked, are you happy doing this? Are you going to continue doing this? What do you think about this? And like, everybody responded that it was stressful and they were just looking for a way out. Like thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:14]:
Now, as somebody who's written service and been on the front counter, after a while it gets heavy. Right. Because it can be stressful, some of that shop design. What are you doing? Because you've been a service advisor for a long time, what are you doing to mitigate that burnout and that stress?

Michael Doherty [00:19:34]:
Taking mini breaks during the day. I absolutely have to. It'll grind you down. Absolutely.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:42]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:19:42]:
I mean, being advocate for the clients and also working with the technicians in the Back and just kind of being a mediator in between at all. I mean, you're kind of really just sandwiched in it.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:51]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:19:52]:
So I found like, you know, taking mini breaks every day, aside from a regular break, but just, you know, five, ten minutes here and there, listen to a song, go take a walk, do something that makes you happy. Just get out of the environment at the moment, get some fresh air. It's imperative. Yeah, but from what you mentioned about Reddit and I haven't seen the post, but I would have to assume that a majority of that dish happiness is because of underappreciation.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:18]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:20:19]:
And when you have somebody in that service advisor role in the beginning, it's definitely a people person and they're excited and they want to be there and want to do it and you have to keep motivating them. I know there's self motivation, but. And we all get paid to do a job, but kindness costs nothing to be kind. I heard that phone call. You did a great job. That ticket that you sold, that was awesome. Just little things. And it has to be constant, Right.

Michael Doherty [00:20:53]:
Not what I mean, like every hour, but just something positive during the day because there's a lot of not positives as part of that job.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:00]:
Yeah, it's heavy. And I. One of my biggest issues, and David hates it, one of my biggest issues is I really, really care about the client experience. And so when I was on the front counter, it overwhelmed me. Right. Because I was working so hard to create this awesome experience and that was driving everything I did. But you can work yourself to death trying to do that. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:24]:
Like, you can put a ton of stress on yourself. You shouldn't have on yourself, like too much, you know, so there's that part of it. And then I see a lot of instances, especially say in my shop, where when I got that pressure off of me, I kind of forgot what it was like to be on the front counter. I forgot what it was like to have that pressure on me. So I say, oh, you're not putting the addresses in or are you not putting the addresses in? Well, I'm busy. Right. And so I grumble about it and I fuss about it. Hey, the source is not in.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:56]:
Why is the source not in? Well, why are you not getting this percent? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? But we forget what it's like to be on the front counter. Right. And so we lose the appreciation for it. It's just like you're not doing the thing I wanted you to do. And so it's hard to maintain that appreciation in that instance. Does that make sense?

Michael Doherty [00:22:14]:
It does. I've been in both situations where if I'm. I really feel like the core reason for doing it is to build a relationship and maintain the relationship.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:27]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:22:28]:
We know that they're calling because something's going on with their car and we know that when they bring their car in, the shop is going to generate revenue.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:36]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:22:36]:
So just taking those two things automatically out of the equation. Right. And not focusing on those, but focus on the client experience.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:42]:
For sure.

Michael Doherty [00:22:43]:
Everybody's got their own way of doing it, building it, but there's still core principles that you need to do along with it.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:50]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:22:51]:
And I think one of the things that, as you mentioned, you know, getting the addresses, marketing source, all that stuff, if you don't get up front, get it at the tail end, it's very important for the business to know what's going on, why, where that lead came from, marketing, etc, all that stuff. But having the stressors that are involved with the job and not noticing what they are because like I said, some people, everybody's got a shelf.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:19]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:23:19]:
I can handle 5, 10, 15 people. And after that, like my shelf capacity is going to drop. Right. Or we had a bunch of waiter oil services that day. And along with that, the stressor of trying to get estimates for people that, you know, probably aren't going to stay there and do the work because they have to get on and do things.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:41]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:23:42]:
But you have to hold it together. There's good days or bad days, but you have to remember it's a people business and that you're in it in that crucial role. It's a quarterback role. It's a quarterback position. And there's always, you know, even when some things aren't going right, there's still a learning lesson. There's still a way to be positive, there's still a way to be kind. But if you've got somebody that's consistently kind of dropping out of sight of doing those things, then you need to find out pretty quickly, like, what's the issue? Is it outside of work? Is it in work? Is there something that we need to talk about? Address.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:17]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:24:18]:
And figure that out.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:19]:
So let me ask you about your shop, your service advisor. Are you handling dispatch and everything? Because that's something that we're in right now is I'm working. You know, Rena is our service advisor coach, and so she says, hey, I think they're a little too overloaded to handle dispatch. I think they're Too overloaded to be managing where the cars are, where they're going, how they're set up. You know what I mean? Because we dispatch the strengths and certain people get certain jobs and we do all that electronically. Are you handling dispatch in the shop or is there a foreman that dispatches for you?

Michael Doherty [00:24:56]:
Or originally we had a shop foreman that was doing dispatch. Over the years that kind of shifted to the front end service. And to be honest, I like doing it, the dispatch part of it, as well as doing the service routing, because I really feel like when somebody calls in and they're identifying their concern of their problem, you're already kind of picturing in your head who's going to be the best fit for that vehicle.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:23]:
For sure.

Michael Doherty [00:25:23]:
It's going to be the best fit to make sure that, that that gets done the right way. And what I mean by that is you've got technicians that might be a little more tidy to do interior work, and you've got somebody that not say they're sloppy, but you know, if they get. If they leave a grease print or something, it's not going to be the end of the world.

David Roman [00:25:40]:
Right.

Michael Doherty [00:25:41]:
You know, but I love the dispatch part of it because it allows me to know how much more I can take in because I know who's doing what. And it's not a control thing. It's just. I feel like it's part of the job. So if I feel that I'm going to be overloaded and I don't believe I can continue to do it, I may have a shop talk with a shop foreman and say, hey, here's where I'm at with it. Could you take this over for this week or whatever? If I'm not there, if I'm on vacation or something, then they have to.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:07]:
Take it and roll it.

Michael Doherty [00:26:07]:
Yeah, exactly. But I like having the ability to do the dispatch because it ties me more into what's going on.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:15]:
Well, so for the longest time when I was writing service, that's what happened is I would do the dispatch, right? And for me, the reason it was important is because if I'm doing the dispatch now, I know which technician it's on. I know how fast we're moving, I know if we're ahead or if we're behind. And I also know if I need to put my foot on the gas, right. And I know when I'm looking at my workflow in shopware, right? Because I keep it up on my screen all the time and I'm paying attention to it. Okay, he's too slow or oops, somebody moved something over top of it. I know that I need to be moving that. And I'm thinking about, there's this client and this is their expectation and I need to push this. We need to go.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:55]:
So I'm calling in saying, hey, where are we on this? What's up with this? Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Right. I have found it's much more difficult for my service advisors to take that role and do it right. I found that they forget about the car or the car gets dropped in the back of the queue somewhere and they're like, at the end of the day, oh my God, we forgot about it. It didn't get done right. And that's stressful to me. Right? Like, I hate that. I really.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:22]:
Of all the things that I hate, that's the thing I hate most. Forgetting a car. You forget cars, David?

David Roman [00:27:28]:
No, we did have a car get dropped off and I think the key didn't get put in one of the key slots that we have. And so nobody went, hey, there's my.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:39]:
Service advisor right now.

David Roman [00:27:42]:
The guy you left outside to fight the hurricane.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:45]:
Oh, my goodness. I guess I need to tell that story, huh?

David Roman [00:27:49]:
Yeah, tell the story, Lucas.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:51]:
For the fifth time. I feel so terrible.

Michael Doherty [00:27:54]:
Outside to fight.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:55]:
Yeah, turn around. Look, that guy right there in the white hat. Dinner last night, and they're all like, it was a terrible, terrible week. Lots of things went wrong, parts, problems happened. Like, we're just, we're in the slump, right? You ever get into a slump in the shop? Things just aren't going the way you want them to.

Michael Doherty [00:28:11]:
Yes, sir.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:11]:
And so we've been going through this slump and so they, hey, look, when you put the top on it, he dumped Mountain Dew on himself. And then I spit my Mountain Dew on our kids.

David Roman [00:28:21]:
Well, there's been stories here and people are not going to be able to keep up.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:28]:
Anyway. Did you just blow bubbles on the microphone?

David Roman [00:28:33]:
No, I'm pretty sure I saw a bubble.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:36]:
I'll go back and check the camera. My poor service advisor. Somehow there was a miscommunication last night. And about 6 o'clock he was going to put keys in the lockbox. He goes outside, by the way, there's a hurricane and there's tornadoes in Blowing Rock last night. And I'm, I'm sitting at dinner with Chad Whitley and Benji and their wives and Braxton was there and we're sitting around having a good time and I'm trying to be Respectful. But my phone keeps going off, like, over and over and over again. At first I thought it was Jeff, and I said, hey, Braxton, go call Jeff.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:09]:
Braxton goes and calls Jeff comes back, My phone keeps going off, and I'm like, this is weird, but I didn't want to interrupt dinner. So we get in the car, and I start driving off. And the doorbell camera rings. That never happens, right? Ever, ever, ever happens. And I'm like, this could not be good. They must have forgotten to put keys out on the phone with one of my technicians. And I'm like, hey, there's this guy at the shop in a white hat. And I'm thinking that maybe we forgot to put his keys out.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:38]:
And Eric is like, justin was wearing a white hat. And I was like, hang on just a minute. So I'm, like, driving, trying to open the camera app and trying to call into the camera. It's this whole ordeal because I had to get my phone out of drive mode and all this stuff to get it to come up. And I realized that for two hours, my service advisor has been in the pouring rain out in front of the shop, just under the awning, right? Because everybody thought he was gone. So they locked the doors and left. And his phone and his keys and everything was inside the shop. So he's just been standing outside?

David Roman [00:30:11]:
No, it's not like he was, like, hunched up against the building. It's a big awning. Like, there's. There's room to relax, but still outside in the cold.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:23]:
What cold?

David Roman [00:30:25]:
He's probably hypothermic. We should check that out.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:28]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:30:29]:
Is that a worker's comp thing?

David Roman [00:30:31]:
Yeah, it's never a workman's comp thing. It was. This happened at home. And you rolled in here. Hypothermic buddy.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:39]:
My dad used to tell his employees if they were fired before they hit the ground.

David Roman [00:30:44]:
That's what I tell my. I'm sorry you lost your job as you were cutting yourself.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:50]:
Exactly. When Eric first came to work for me, he was from New York. And evidently, they do things differently in New York. And so I want to say he bruised his fingernail. Dude, I come to work a couple times a month with purple fingernails and blood blisters, and he, like, goes to the hospital and files a workers comp claim over, like, something like that. He's like, go. In New York, if you even, like, remotely hurt yourself, you have to file a worker's comp claim. I was like, we don't.

Lucas Underwood [00:31:22]:
We don't.

David Roman [00:31:24]:
We don't do that here, it's not New York.

Michael Doherty [00:31:26]:
Just suck it up here.

Lucas Underwood [00:31:27]:
Yeah, exactly. You have to.

David Roman [00:31:29]:
If a limb has been lost, we'll talk about it.

Lucas Underwood [00:31:32]:
Yeah, maybe there's. Ms. Gianna.

Michael Doherty [00:31:35]:
We'll get you an Uber to the nearest emergency room.

Lucas Underwood [00:31:37]:
Yeah, maybe. No, I mean, if you've watched Yellowstone, who gets you an Uber to the train station? You've not watched Yellowstone.

Michael Doherty [00:31:46]:
You watch Yellowstone, bits and pieces.

Lucas Underwood [00:31:48]:
The train station is this big ravine and they say, hey, I'm gonna take you to the train station. They take you out to the edge, shoot you in the back of the head and kick you down the hill.

David Roman [00:31:55]:
Is that that kind of show? Like, yeah. Really?

Michael Doherty [00:31:59]:
Their enforcer, Rip?

Lucas Underwood [00:32:00]:
Yeah, yeah.

David Roman [00:32:01]:
Who are they killing?

Michael Doherty [00:32:02]:
I will say probably the best episode and I don't much money of them. But there was one in particular where. So it was a biker gang was on the property and they thought it was just public park and they politely asked him to leave. And Rip came up and said, I'm gonna ask you one time. Like, you leave or you're never leaving.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:20]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well. And I think they ended up dying after that.

Michael Doherty [00:32:24]:
Yeah. Made him dig their own graves.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:26]:
Yeah. And then the one that I remember was from the other show. Like, you know, they made those other, like the prequels to it. Yellowstone came out first, but then they made prequels to Yellowstone and the whole universe here. And so they tell this whole like story ahead of time. It's like 18, 19 or 1893 and then 1923.

Michael Doherty [00:32:50]:
Gotcha.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:51]:
And so the first one, dude, that like, it's way better than Yellowstone. It's way shorter, but it's way better than Yellowstone. The acting in it. And like everything about it's better. You don't watch shows, do you?

David Roman [00:33:03]:
I don't watch shows. I don't know how you have time for that garbage. That's your problem right there.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:07]:
It's because I don't sleep.

David Roman [00:33:09]:
You need to sleep.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:11]:
I probably do, but I. I started.

David Roman [00:33:13]:
Tracking my sleep with the watch.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:16]:
Made me nervous. You went like, what in the world?

David Roman [00:33:20]:
I forgot my watch. I told you, I forgot my watch from my watch, my glass. It was a mess anyway.

Michael Doherty [00:33:27]:
What is your technician to service advisor ratio?

Lucas Underwood [00:33:30]:
I have five technicians and one service advisor, okay? And I'm hiring a manager.

David Roman [00:33:35]:
He knows it's a problem.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:36]:
And then I've got a parts guy too.

David Roman [00:33:38]:
You can look at him like that though.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:40]:
Yeah, we.

David Roman [00:33:40]:
What you do is what you do. And then you leave them outside.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:44]:
Yeah. In the cold and rain. Don't forget the Rain and the bears. We have bears.

David Roman [00:33:50]:
You have bears.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:51]:
We have different bears than you. Okay. We don't have the kind of bears that are coming to eat you up. Okay. Thankfully, saying that's gross. David, you gotta watch him. He has a very liberal client base. Liberal's not really the problem.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:09]:
But.

Michael Doherty [00:34:10]:
So one service advisor, five technicians. Okay. Yeah. Then I would probably say that person dispatching wouldn't be optimal.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:16]:
Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. It's overload. It is definitely overload, and we're working on fixing that. But it's been back and forth for a while. And the problem was, is I could not find a service advisor I liked, and that was a good fit. I've been through quite a few trying to pinpoint, like, somebody who wants to do it, but.

David Roman [00:34:39]:
Lucas has a very demanding style of management. He hires people pleasers. When you hire people pleasers, they go out of their way to please the person that hired them. And when you are as demanding as Lucas is to cause people to freak out and then quit.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:03]:
Yeah, I'm pretty hard. I'm pretty hard.

David Roman [00:35:06]:
That's happened a few times.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:07]:
Yeah. Justin just ignores me. It's pretty great. I like.

David Roman [00:35:11]:
Does he. Yeah, he's not. He's. He's new.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:14]:
Yeah, he just ignores me.

Michael Doherty [00:35:16]:
Are these new technicians supplying parts and labor to the service advisor, or is that all the service advisor parts guys.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:21]:
Doing most of that?

Michael Doherty [00:35:22]:
Okay. Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:23]:
Parts guys supposed to be doing much.

Michael Doherty [00:35:24]:
Got you. Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:25]:
So that's how it's set up.

David Roman [00:35:27]:
I like how you slid that. Supposed to in there.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:29]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:35:30]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:30]:
Not like, I'll jump in and write service. And I think my biggest issue is, is I've been using shopware for a long time. And so for me, I have a really hard time understanding why it takes an hour to build an estimated. Like, I'm. I'm four minutes.

David Roman [00:35:43]:
They're not using the tools.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:45]:
Right. I agree. Not using. Not using Can Jaws.

David Roman [00:35:48]:
Juan, doing it the other day, I'm like, hey, why are you building that all over again? Like, we just. We just had that same car in here and we just did that same service. Just look that up. It. Like, I get that you have to tweak, tweak. That's fine.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:04]:
Like, hey, like, if you search this job and there's one similar to it, like, it should pop up an estimator that it tells you you've done something similar to that. Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:36:13]:
Adjust your labor if it's changed or something like that.

David Roman [00:36:15]:
But no, that's what the. They have that. It's called Past Services.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:20]:
You Nobody ever checks it. Do you use Past Services? Yeah, I use it all the time.

David Roman [00:36:25]:
That's all I use. It's fantastic.

Michael Doherty [00:36:27]:
Repeat client comes in for an oil service to start with or a new client. It's the same vehicle. Just go to Past Services and yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:33]:
I'll get them like three, six oil coolers. Right. Or, you know, things that we do.

David Roman [00:36:38]:
A lot of 6 oil.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:39]:
I'll take the year off. I just take the year off and use.

David Roman [00:36:43]:
If you can't find it because you'd prefer to have it same year, make a model.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:47]:
Yeah, but I'm just saying I like. I'll back it out and as long as it has the same VIN number or the VIN identifier for the engine code.

David Roman [00:36:53]:
Yes.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:53]:
Then I'm just.

Michael Doherty [00:36:54]:
Yeah. The main body of what you need is there.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:56]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Michael Doherty [00:36:57]:
I love that part of it.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:59]:
And I'll tell you what else I use that makes it faster is I use FCP Euro. And so have you ever, like, you know you can get a wholesale account with them?

Michael Doherty [00:37:07]:
I've heard of them.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:08]:
You can buy European parts cheaper from FCP Euro than you can get them from. The dealer usually have them faster. But what's cool about it is like, let's say that you're doing a timing job on the BMW, right? Ton of torque to yield bolts. Well, when you click on the kit, you just put the kit number in and it comes with all the bolts, the seals, the gaskets, everything you need to do the job. So you don't have to go, I need this bolt. I need this bolt.

David Roman [00:37:33]:
Now he does that. What I do is I go to FCP Euro. It gives you your entire list, including part numbers. You copy, you paste, you dump it all into shopware and then you order it from worldpack.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:46]:
The problem is worldpack and dealers are longer to get to me than FCP Euro.

David Roman [00:37:51]:
Okay, well, they're not.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:52]:
And the prices aren't as good.

David Roman [00:37:53]:
There's a warehouse WorldPak World House.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:55]:
Now, you might. What you might do by using a kit is you might hurt your GP per hour because you're putting one kit in. So it's a higher price, so you have less margin in it. So that is a potential. You'd have to watch that.

David Roman [00:38:07]:
Yeah, maybe. But then you just tweak the pricing. So whatever you need it to be.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:11]:
Yeah, that's what I do.

David Roman [00:38:13]:
But you can. If it's not available now, it's different if it's not available. Like we ran into an Issue. For whatever reason, we couldn't find control arms on an Audi. We went to FCP Euro. They had a kit with the bolts and everything that you need to do the repair. And I think even if we ordered everything separately, some of the parts weren't available or we were ordering them in from like Massachusetts or somewhere like that. And it was just easier just to click one button, order it in from FCP Euro, wait two days, shows up, everything's there.

David Roman [00:38:47]:
But we still use the pricing off of the other jobs. The other. The parts from all over the place. That's when I'll order it from them.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:56]:
What are you. Are you typically calling to get part pricing and part information? So let's say you do a timing job on the BMW parts tech.

David Roman [00:39:04]:
Why wouldn't he use parts tech?

Lucas Underwood [00:39:06]:
I'm sure he uses parts tech, but some of it's not available.

David Roman [00:39:08]:
Everybody should be using parts tech.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:10]:
Well, I'm using parts tech. Are you using parts? Surely you're using parts tech. Do what?

Michael Doherty [00:39:15]:
No.

David Roman [00:39:15]:
So he didn't mean that. Stop. Cut. Edit. Yes, I am using parts tech. It's the best thing ever.

Michael Doherty [00:39:24]:
Say, like I said earlier, I'm learning. I'm learning for people smarter than me.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:27]:
Listen, honey, if you think we're smarter than you.

David Roman [00:39:33]:
So anyway, you click a button and it gives you all of your vendors on one screen.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:38]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:39:39]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:40]:
And so you can also open RepairLink within Shopware now, you know that RepairLink.

Michael Doherty [00:39:45]:
Yes. Ours is paired with Worldpack exclusively. We get like six deliveries a day.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:51]:
That is pretty cool about being down here.

Michael Doherty [00:39:53]:
The hub is like literally 15 minutes from the shop that I work at. So it's constant deliveries every day. For parts that I can't get through World Pack, we try ssf.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:05]:
Yeah, I like ssf.

Michael Doherty [00:40:06]:
They got some cool kits.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:07]:
Yeah. And they've got a lot of stuff that World Pack and even some dealers don't have.

Michael Doherty [00:40:13]:
And I have found just. I hate to see a price comparison, but of like it's like a turbocharger assembly or something that's more cost, costly. I'll compare and sometimes SSF will have it for a little bit less. And then I'll call our World Pack rep and say, can you match or whatever. But some specialty stuff from the dealer. TRP parts.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:32]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:40:32]:
That you know, you can't get on World Pack for sure. Stuff like that. That just don't have a lot of alcohol markup in them. But very rarely am I having to use the dealers.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:42]:
Yeah, there's resources. Otherwise, if you're using Worldpack I can see why you may not have partstech because the worldpack integration is native in shopware. So I could see why, like, if he's going into that, that would make sense. But I couldn't imagine not having parts tech.

Michael Doherty [00:40:59]:
I'm going to look that up.

Lucas Underwood [00:41:00]:
Yeah. Like, I could not imagine because, like oil and filters and all the other things I could ever need something from any of my common vendors. I want to say that they're working on putting SSF in there.

David Roman [00:41:12]:
I think SSF is in there.

Lucas Underwood [00:41:13]:
Is it? I need to add my stuff to it. So, like, you just, you pull it up on one page and all your vendors are on the same screen.

David Roman [00:41:20]:
And so you just search break caliber.

Lucas Underwood [00:41:23]:
Across all of your vendors. And then like, so for instance, you have a part in there that you've looked up before. Right. And let's say that you need this OES part and your primary vendor, worldpac doesn't have it. We click parts and then click find and it pulls up that part number and all the offerings from all the vendors of that part number. So then you can just go down the list and you can say, okay, this. Who does OES supplier?

David Roman [00:41:49]:
And they have put a little number up there and you can look at all your. Just one. One look at the screen. It says, oh, they've got one. They've got one. You click, click. They've got it at the local warehouse.

Michael Doherty [00:41:59]:
Order and it exports right to shopware.

David Roman [00:42:01]:
Exports right to shopware.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:03]:
Yeah, goes right into shopware. You don't have to do anything.

David Roman [00:42:05]:
You can order it in shopware. Like there's a button. I don't always do that, but if it's something simple or a single part. Yeah, you just click the button in shopware. It'll go direct parts tech.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:17]:
Yeah. Po. The whole nine yards.

David Roman [00:42:18]:
Yeah. It'll pull the part through parts tech, order the part, and then ship it to you.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:22]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:42:23]:
Not to segue, but since we are talking about shopware, we have yet to do it. But do you guys have the offer? The online payment portal has been working out pretty good.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:32]:
Oh, yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:42:33]:
Because we're getting a lot more clients for gravitating to want to do that.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:35]:
Yeah. And the thing I'll tell you is you need to make sure it's somebody you know. Right. We've. We have recently started not being as strict because we've not had the option, like I've been out of town. Typically, if it's somebody I don't know, I'll make them do a credit card authorization And I'll verify their identity and everything else. If you know the client, they're a long time client, they've been in and out a lot then you don't have any issues at all just sending it to them and they pay online and it's good to go. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:06]:
And it is so nice because I just go outside, put the keys in the lockbox. They show up later at night and pick it up and go.

David Roman [00:43:15]:
So we don't do that. We take the payment over the phone. I've got the phone call recorded. I know where the phone call is coming in from. That's the only thing that I. That's the extra step that we have that would give me a little bit of safety over and above them punching the stuff in themselves.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:35]:
It's not. It's not as secure A phone call is not as secure as them punching in themselves. Now I'm hearing and I'll have to go ask Lisa who to ask about this but I want to say that they are going to do the. What's the new verification thing where it like verifies your telephone number and all that. Got smile.

David Roman [00:43:57]:
Edson's in the.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:59]:
Did you know her husband is like a super duper.

David Roman [00:44:01]:
Yeah, you've told me that.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:02]:
Okay. Sorry. Famous baseball guy. Sorry. I haven't mentioned Shop Marketing Pros so I figured I'd drop that in there.

David Roman [00:44:11]:
We haven't mentioned Shop Marketing Pros.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:13]:
You're a piece of junk.

David Roman [00:44:15]:
Do you have your website through Shop Marketing Pros?

Michael Doherty [00:44:18]:
No.

David Roman [00:44:19]:
What. What are you doing?

Michael Doherty [00:44:21]:
It's not my shop.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:22]:
I would complain. I would follow Complaint.

David Roman [00:44:25]:
Yeah, I would too youo need me.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:28]:
To file a formal complaint for you?

David Roman [00:44:29]:
I'll call. Yeah, Lucas will call a guy.

Michael Doherty [00:44:31]:
Yeah. I'll give you the website of our store and you can put a negative one star review and say make it like. Make it clearly make it. Make it like a ransom. Yes, I'll take it off a ransom one star review and said that once you do Shop Marketing Pros and it's verified through our anonymous source we'll change it to a five star review.

David Roman [00:44:52]:
Bet we had that couple from Michigan and remember we were talking afterwards and they were asking about marketing and stuff and who did your website now? And the guy's like oh, I did it. So I'm prepping the podcast and I went to their website and no, no crap. He did his own website. It is a page. Here's our phone numbers and that's it.

Michael Doherty [00:45:20]:
One and done.

David Roman [00:45:21]:
Yeah, it's kind of looks like people Working on cars, name of the business, phone numbers. Done. That's it.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:28]:
That's the website. Kim looked at my website one time. We were. I think we may have been at asta. She looked at my website and she's like, bless your heart. I'm like, oh, what, is it bad? It just way. She said, bless your heart. Damn.

David Roman [00:45:44]:
How long ago was that?

Lucas Underwood [00:45:46]:
Long time.

David Roman [00:45:46]:
Yeah. Because you've had some nice websites since then. A while.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:51]:
I'm really happy with my website. They're doing for me now.

David Roman [00:45:54]:
I haven't seen your new one.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:56]:
What?

David Roman [00:45:56]:
I haven't seen it. I haven't looked at it.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:58]:
I see how it is.

David Roman [00:46:00]:
All right. You got to that one where it was just you and Nate, and I think it was George. Like, with across the arms. As soon as you pulled it up, it was a bam.

Michael Doherty [00:46:10]:
I know in subweb slips, you can just have, like, pictures of the team.

David Roman [00:46:13]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:46:14]:
So the one that he's got of the guy that was outside in the rain. Picture.

Lucas Underwood [00:46:19]:
Yeah, yeah, him. Just, like, tears streaming down his face. Standing there with a sad look on his face.

Michael Doherty [00:46:25]:
Team member.

Lucas Underwood [00:46:26]:
Come work.

David Roman [00:46:27]:
Yeah. Come work for me. Instead of Dave's Auto. Walking around, you can be like, how many hours have you spent out in the rain, Officer? In two hours. I really enjoy it. It's refreshing. Hey.

Lucas Underwood [00:46:40]:
Woke me up. But yes, I use the payment portal on shopware.

Michael Doherty [00:46:46]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:46:47]:
David's just lame because I saw recently.

Michael Doherty [00:46:49]:
They'Ve gotten pretty aggressive with their marketing offering like, $3,000 toward, you know, whatever. So I'm just curious if. If you like it.

David Roman [00:46:58]:
As soon as they put in split funding, I'll switch. They don't have split funding. I gotta have that split.

Michael Doherty [00:47:02]:
You mean like AMEX and Crypto?

David Roman [00:47:05]:
No, no. Like, they swipe the card for a thousand, my credit card processor will dump $200 into one bank account and 800 into another bank account.

Michael Doherty [00:47:15]:
Got you. Okay. Okay.

David Roman [00:47:16]:
So that essentially holds back my sales tax and other tax payments back for me in an account that I have very little access to. I don't mess with it. What was all the way across town? I have 20% or 22%. So I operate off 78% of whatever comes in that goes into my OPEX account. And then I move that around. That's what I operate. And then everything else kind of sits in the background, accumulates. And then I pay whatever I got to pay out of that.

Michael Doherty [00:47:42]:
How long have you had your shop for?

David Roman [00:47:43]:
Too long. Far too long.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:45]:
Yeah, he started last month.

David Roman [00:47:47]:
What's that?

Lucas Underwood [00:47:49]:
He started it last Month.

David Roman [00:47:53]:
Oh, to only be one month in the business. It's like I was youthful and optimistic, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Michael Doherty [00:48:02]:
Did you have it when Covid came out?

David Roman [00:48:04]:
What's that?

Michael Doherty [00:48:04]:
You had it in 2020.

David Roman [00:48:05]:
Oh, yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:48:06]:
Okay.

David Roman [00:48:06]:
That was fun.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:07]:
I want to say that was about the same time that he had decided he was going to rent another building.

David Roman [00:48:12]:
No, no.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:13]:
Was it after?

David Roman [00:48:14]:
Yeah, that was way after.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:15]:
I'll never forget, like this whole. I want to say it was over a year that he's renting two buildings because the building inspector holds him up on the other building. And so he's like paying rent on two buildings and he's like, I'll never do this again, man. Like a year after, he's like, I'm gonna rent a building for ADOs. And by the way, I'm not gonna do any ADOs calibrations.

David Roman [00:48:37]:
You know, I didn't, I didn't. In my mind.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:44]:
I'm not wrong, am I?

David Roman [00:48:48]:
I. Nobody framed it like that. To me. This is your fault, really. Ultimately, this is your fault. You should have stopped me. You should have stopped me.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:59]:
I've tried to stop you from doing a couple things.

David Roman [00:49:02]:
You never say anything.

Michael Doherty [00:49:04]:
We've actually got a guy that's over toward, I want to say, like Wilmington area. He does mobile ADOs calibrations. Yeah, like hook emerge out of the parking lot. Oh, man, set it up.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:15]:
We, we talked to somebody one time that was an engineer at a car company and he said, hey, you, you want to see how they're calibrating cars at our dealerships? And I said, sure. And he turns his phone around and there's this car and there's targets hanging up on the chain link fence behind the shop. And there's a tech in the car hitting calibrate on the scan tool. And there's another tech pushing the car back and forth. Whoops, man. It's precision.

Michael Doherty [00:49:47]:
Get it done.

David Roman [00:49:48]:
I don't, I don't care what the mobile guys say. It is, it is, it is a crapshoot. Now I'm not saying that you can't, you cannot calibrate cars in the parking lot. You can, certain year makes models you can calibrate in the parking lot. And anything that you can calibrate dynamically, you just get in the car and go drive it and spam the button until it goes. Those are fine. But there are so many vehicles that require precision placement of the targets. No sunlight interference.

David Roman [00:50:26]:
The lighting has to be right in the building and the floor has to be either accounted for some of the newer pieces of software account for unevenness on the ground. Some manufacturers allow you to enter in variations on the ground. They let you go in and say, here's your low point, here's your high point. And so you talk to these mobile guys and they're like, oh, I go to the same 17 customers and I know what their floor calculations are. And I just put that into the thing. It's like, okay, that's great. But the cars that you make the trip all the way out there to go calibrate this car, maybe, you know, maybe you do the research beforehand and you just tell them, I don't know how you would do that. I mean, I guess you could, but like, we go off of the software, so we get.

David Roman [00:51:15]:
We open the software up and then it tells us. But it's calibrating for unevenness on the floor and has me do the whole rolling and the whole swinging compensation thing. It's checking and then it has me position the machine. I don't know how you do that correctly out in a parking lot. That's insane to me. It's insane.

Michael Doherty [00:51:36]:
Well, I will say, the one that we had done so far, it's only been one is for a windshield and an Audi S8 that had to be calibrated for. Other than that, we haven't used it or had to use it, but.

David Roman [00:51:48]:
And that might have been dynamic. He might have come out and hooked up a scan tool.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:52]:
Well, but can you remember the Air Pro? The Air Pro even mounts to, like, the windshield or something.

Michael Doherty [00:51:58]:
He did have targets set up. I did see that in the parking lot.

David Roman [00:52:00]:
Oh, my goodness.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:01]:
So that's weird to me. And here's why it's weird to me is I am turning away a substantial number of especially Audis and Volkswagens for even just alignments because they require calibration. Is your team looking to verify that to make sure? Because, like, 20, 18 and up Audis, 90% of them are requiring calibration to align them.

David Roman [00:52:29]:
Yeah.

Michael Doherty [00:52:33]:
I'm not sure because, like, you.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:35]:
Take the bumper off, you. You do an alignment on it. You.

David Roman [00:52:40]:
You think of, like, condensers, radiators.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:42]:
Yeah, like that, Alternators, like just about everything we're touching on Audi right now, everything we're touching in Volkswagen that's newer requires calibration. And so I bought the equipment because I'm just like, dude, I can't keep sending all this away. I mean, it's just every car I touch right now. BMWs, BMW's not as bad. Mercedes just Talk about euro car alignments.

Michael Doherty [00:53:04]:
Gotcha.

David Roman [00:53:05]:
You do an alignment with just, you know, run of the mill requires blind spot calibration. Like you don't know. Unless you look up and see all that at least gives you the list.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:17]:
Yeah. Hunter tails.

David Roman [00:53:17]:
If you touch this, it requires this calibration.

Michael Doherty [00:53:21]:
Yeah. I'd have to talk to the shop foreman, but right now I think our alignments are like 1.5. So it doesn't sound right for with 8 OS calibration.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:27]:
No.

David Roman [00:53:27]:
Well, no. So even if you required an 8 house calibration, you, 100% line item has to be separate.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:35]:
Separate? Yeah.

David Roman [00:53:35]:
It's not the same operation. You have an alignment and then you tell the customer, hey, to do the alignment correctly, I have to do a calibration. So it is job A, then job B. And even in job B, what we've been doing is everything separate. So radar is its own calibration. Blind spot is its own calibration. 360 is its own calibration. What's the other one? Front camera is its own calibration.

David Roman [00:54:03]:
Everything is separate. Separate. Even though the process might be the same or, hey, I'm going to be able to do front radar and camera in one operation, we still take the pictures. We take the pictures of the entire process and every step is outlined on the repair order in shopware to show that, hey, here's the car set up. Here's the machine. Here's the machine telling us to do A. Here's us doing A. Here's the machine telling us to B.

David Roman [00:54:33]:
Here's us doing B. Don't want any nonsense. Car drives itself into a freaking school of orphans and kills everybody. I'm not getting sued.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:43]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:54:43]:
I did what I was supposed to do.

Michael Doherty [00:54:44]:
And that the liability factor.

David Roman [00:54:46]:
Yeah, yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:46]:
And that's the thing, is, like, it hasn't happened yet.

David Roman [00:54:49]:
It's gonna. It just turns into a. What's a dealership?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:51]:
There's mama Kim. Everybody turn around, wave at mama Kim.

David Roman [00:54:55]:
Who's everybody? Who's that? Who's everybody?

Michael Doherty [00:54:58]:
Who?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:58]:
Me and you. She looked. She heard about the website. She's coming to check in. This is your fault, Michael.

David Roman [00:55:05]:
I know, I know. We'll let them know.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:08]:
And look, I'm just going to also point out that if you were to, like, be sending cars out that required calibrations and did not get calibrations, that too would be your fault. I'm just pointing that out. I'm just. It's.

David Roman [00:55:19]:
What? Was it John eagle?

Lucas Underwood [00:55:20]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:55:20]:
Was it? Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:21]:
John Eagle collision. Have you Ever heard about that?

Michael Doherty [00:55:23]:
No.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:23]:
Okay, so like really super high level story of what happened at John Eagle Collision Insurance Company. I think the deal was is the insurance company owned the car and for some reason had the car fixed and then sold the car. Even the person who was driving the car was not the person who had the car repaired. Insurance goes to John Eagle Collision and says, no, we want it fixed like X. Right. And John Eagle Collision comes back and has documented. They went back to the insurance company and said, no, the service information says the car has to be fixed like this. And I want to say it was down to the, it was either the roof was to be glued on or the roof was supposed to be welded on.

David Roman [00:56:05]:
No, the roof was supposed to be glued on and they decided to weld it on because it was going to be less rattly.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:11]:
Yeah. So there was some reason behind it. And so then this person buys the car, is in a collision, the roof didn't hold, so the car folded and caught on fire. So they couldn't get the guy out of the car because the door was jammed and so he burnt like very severely.

David Roman [00:56:27]:
That was it. The car didn't crumble the way that it was supposed to crunch up in a certain manner because they altered it.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:34]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:56:34]:
And maintain the passenger compartment. And it didn't. It buckled and so they came, trapped the guy inside. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:43]:
And so I want to say it was 14 cents for every second that the man lives, the rest of his life that they're paying him. Right. It's the largest settlement in the automotive world ever. Right. Insurance is paying it. John Eagle is paying it. The service advisor at the or the estimator, they tried to go out Honda.

David Roman [00:57:00]:
And Honda said, hey, turns out you guys didn't fix this the way we told you to fix this. The way the car was designed, it required this kind of repair in order for it to save this guy's life or his legs at least.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:12]:
Yeah. And so they, they go after everybody. They go after the estimator, they go after the shop owner, they go after the technician, they go after the insurance company and, and they, they won against everybody. And what the judge said to them was, is like, we understand that you said that they wanted it fixed this way and we understand it's their car. But you are the professional. And so therefore you cannot pass that duty as a professional loan to the consumer. You can't do that. That's your duty, that's your responsibility.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:46]:
You can't therefore say, you don't go to a doctor and say, hey, can you put this Chinese hip in instead of the American hip in? Right. Like, it doesn't work that way. It's his responsibility. And so, yeah, you might want to check on that calibration.

David Roman [00:58:00]:
So that kind of lawsuit hasn't happened at ADOS yet, but it's just a matter of time now. Hey, somebody's going to get.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:06]:
Hey, I'm going to tell you something.

David Roman [00:58:07]:
About it hung out to dry.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:08]:
Chris Chesney was in that panel that we did at Ratchet and Ranch. And Chris knows the court cases surrounding stuff like that. And Chris said, I'm going to tell you something. He said, the insurance companies are trying to sweep ADOS cases under the rug right now. And somebody in the room said, why are they trying to sweep ADOS cases under the rug? And he said, because they don't want the calibration cost to go up.

David Roman [00:58:33]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:33]:
And so they're trying to keep them all covered up so people don't know about it.

David Roman [00:58:37]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:38]:
And so that's what.

David Roman [00:58:39]:
It's ugly, dude. It's ugly. That's what, that's what spurred me these stupid conversations. So again, his fault is what spurred me to go and buy an ADAS calibration machine and rent a building specifically so I could do these calibrations with the right dimensions and all that garbage. Because I still want. I didn't want to. Here's a problem. If I sublet, I lose control of the accuracy and the quality of that particular process.

Lucas Underwood [00:59:07]:
Absolutely.

David Roman [00:59:07]:
And so all of a sudden I'm chasing, you know, Dick's mobile ADOS calibrations in the sketchy white van and hey, there's a problem. Somebody's dead. That guy disappears. LLC folds up, went out of business last week. Oh, what am I supposed to do now? I'm left holding the bag.

Lucas Underwood [00:59:26]:
Yeah, well, that's what was interesting about Dutch and I had a conversation with an attorney and with an insurance person. When being on the AASP national board, I was privy to a lot of insurance conversations, especially with UFG Universal or United Fire Group. And so I was hearing more of their discussions behind the scenes about why they do the things they do as an insurance company and like, what's the logic behind the decisions that they make and how they approach these things. And Dutch and I had a conversation at one point and somebody told us it's subrogation is what this all comes down to. Talking about customer supplied parts, for instance. He said, this is not about. And one of the issues. And I'm by no means an attorney, so I couldn't explain all this.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:18]:
There is a precedent set. Universal commercial code does not cover service work. But when you install a component because of precedent that's been set in rulings with universal commercial code, therefore now you fall under that code, right? Because you installed a part, so you're now responsible for in the same way. And so this, this person says if you install a client supplied part, the reason your insurance company does not like it is they can't subrogate against the parts supplier because now there's not somebody else to hold the bag. Like David said, same thing with a mobile provider. They can disappear. And now they're gone. You have no recourse.

Lucas Underwood [01:01:12]:
You have nothing to come back with. You have nothing you can go after. And your insurance company does not like that. They very much want to be able to go after a Napa. They very much want to be able to go after an advanced auto parts or an Audi or whoever it is. And so that is their method for accomplishing that. And more and more. The lady from ufg, the last meeting we had with them, she said I would challenge any shop owner to go and look at their insurance fine print.

Lucas Underwood [01:01:43]:
And she said about 90% of policies from. Because you, like, you got all these different insurance company names, but all of those policies are really insured by a handful of groups, right? They're all underneath the same holding. And she said, I would say 90% of auto repair shop garage keeper insurances say something about no client supplied parts. So what is wrong with him?

David Roman [01:02:09]:
I don't know.

Lucas Underwood [01:02:11]:
I mean, he looks a lot better without that drink in his hand. Does he realize that we're ignoring him yet?

Michael Doherty [01:02:18]:
So I'm definitely gonna talk to the shop foreman tomorrow about the alignment stuff, but are you guys interested in getting alignment today?

Lucas Underwood [01:02:26]:
Yeah, I know, right? Like, David's got his Audi out here that he rented. What kind of rental car did you get this time?

David Roman [01:02:33]:
I didn't get a rental car. I had to find my way. You know what I had to do to get here? I had to hitchhike. I heard Jeff got a ride.

Lucas Underwood [01:02:40]:
Oh, I was in so much trouble with him last night.

David Roman [01:02:43]:
Jeff got a ride. I didn't get a ride. I had to hitchhike.

Lucas Underwood [01:02:46]:
We're sitting at dinner and I'm telling Braxton to call.

David Roman [01:02:48]:
I had to jump on a truckers.

Lucas Underwood [01:02:51]:
I'm sure you jumped on that trucker something. First it was bears, now it's truckers. You're disgusting.

David Roman [01:03:00]:
It came out all wrong.