Changing The Industry Podcast

David [00:00:01]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:00:01]:
You gonna hit the record button?

David [00:00:03]:
I guess.

Lucas [00:00:04]:
Why? Are you? I'm just curious. Why do you have to close your laptop to hit the record button?

David [00:00:08]:
Because I gotta retry. Well, I'll get distracted if I leave it off.

Anna Belliveau [00:00:12]:
That's equivalent to, you know when you're gonna park and you put the volume down.

Lucas [00:00:18]:
Well, the, the, the tool he has on his PC, he just can click record without moving.

David [00:00:24]:
I gotta. I don't have it. I don't have it connected. Yeah. So I have to like reconnect it and then make sure it comes up.

Lucas [00:00:33]:
And you don't have it connected.

David [00:00:34]:
I know, I know.

Michael Belliveau [00:00:35]:
So many steps.

David [00:00:36]:
Well, just because you got it working, I'm like, I'm gonna mess with it.

Lucas [00:00:40]:
Yeah, I'm with you. Are you happier about the clap than you were yesterday?

David [00:00:46]:
Yes.

Lucas [00:00:46]:
You're gonna complain about it?

David [00:00:47]:
No, no, no. It'll be fine.

Lucas [00:00:49]:
It'll be good.

David [00:00:53]:
You ready? You good?

Lucas [00:00:54]:
Yeah, I'm good. Are you good?

David [00:00:55]:
Yeah. Introduce yourselves.

Michael Belliveau [00:00:58]:
Hi, I'm Michael Bellavo, owner, car dock on the island. We're a full service automotive shop in Venice, Florida.

Lucas [00:01:03]:
Nice.

Anna Belliveau [00:01:05]:
I'm Annabelle, wife and partner.

Lucas [00:01:09]:
Yeah, very cool. Do you work in the shop?

Anna Belliveau [00:01:12]:
No, I do not. I'm just watches.

Lucas [00:01:16]:
Lucky you.

Michael Belliveau [00:01:17]:
She watches from.

Lucas [00:01:19]:
From afar. How long you been in business?

Michael Belliveau [00:01:22]:
We've been open since 2000. I purchased a shop about two and a half years ago from the prior owners.

Lucas [00:01:27]:
Okay. Now, were you working as a tech, Were you working as an owner? What was the.

Michael Belliveau [00:01:29]:
I work, I worked there for about a year and a half prior with the owner. He actually brought me in as a manager. My experience throughout the industry has been in management.

Lucas [00:01:38]:
Okay.

Michael Belliveau [00:01:38]:
Most. Most of the industry. Yeah.

Lucas [00:01:40]:
Right.

David [00:01:42]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:01:43]:
When you say management, are we talking dealership management, independent management, fleet management?

Michael Belliveau [00:01:49]:
I started within the tire, started as like, you know, third key tire, tire guy, you know, selling tires and.

David [00:01:55]:
Okay.

Michael Belliveau [00:01:56]:
They realized throughout the years that this guy knows what he's doing and kind of move my way up.

Lucas [00:02:01]:
Very cool. Now the tire industry is extraordinarily profitable and every time we say that, listeners like get butt hurt over it and they're like, no, it's not. You can't make any money doing tires. You can make a fortune doing tires. If you do it right, you can.

Michael Belliveau [00:02:16]:
Do very well doing tires. Our shop was not a tire shop. That was an old tire shop that the owners weren't selling. Selling tires.

Lucas [00:02:23]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:02:23]:
When I took it over, we turned the tire business on drastically and it made a huge difference.

Lucas [00:02:29]:
Yeah. Because I mean, it's huge GP per hour. And you don't need a super skilled employee to do it?

Michael Belliveau [00:02:33]:
No, not at all.

Lucas [00:02:34]:
Right. So it like, moves a ton of volume very well. What I gotta ask, what are you running on margins on tires? Because this conversation comes up all the time. I run high on the higher end, but I'm on program, so, like, I split the difference. I take part of the program revenue and put towards the margin on the tire. So it brings the consumer price down a little bit, and so I end up at the same margin I'd end up with anyway.

Michael Belliveau [00:02:58]:
Yeah, we strive to be around 30, 32% on the. The part itself for tires. And we have a. You know, we. Our labor is very strict.

David [00:03:05]:
It's.

Michael Belliveau [00:03:06]:
It doesn't deviate at all. We don't have any special. Any special major pricing for tires or anything. We have our labor rate plus our, you know, the fees and whatnot. So we maintain a very good GP on tires.

David [00:03:16]:
Very cool.

Lucas [00:03:16]:
Very cool.

David [00:03:17]:
I am going to offer free alignments, entire rotations, for as long as they own those tires.

Lucas [00:03:25]:
Really?

David [00:03:26]:
Yes.

Lucas [00:03:26]:
That's a good idea. I mean, I do free tire rotations already. I don't do alignments, though.

David [00:03:31]:
I'm gonna do alignments, the whole nine. The only thing I'm not gonna add is ADAs. Yeah, that's separate, but I'm gonna own the car at that point. These people are nuts. It is the stupidest thing in the world. Like, oh, I go to Costco, they give me free rotations. Okay, so twice a year you need to go back to Costco for a rotation. What's that really saving you? And then they're ugga duggang the lug nuts.

David [00:03:56]:
So you just warped your rotors. Okay, I get a brake job out of it, so thanks. Just because what, I charge like 45 bucks for a rotation. You saved yourself $90, but cost yourself 600 because I got to do a brake job.

Michael Belliveau [00:04:10]:
Yeah, yeah. Rotations for us are almost one of the lost leaders. We only charge, I think we charge 10 bucks for a rotation on top of an oil change. And if they do buy the tires from us, we don't charge for the rotation.

David [00:04:21]:
Have you ever done a rotation yourself?

Michael Belliveau [00:04:23]:
Yeah, I've done them.

David [00:04:24]:
Yeah, but you're like, you're here, so just kind of picture in your head. It's, I don't know, like 25 degrees, and they just ran through salt and snow, and they pull in and they ask for a rotation in their 35s and you're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna bang this out real quick. You pick up the 80 pound wheel and tire combo completely covered in salt and snow. And then as you're like struggling this thing off, a giant wad of snow hits you in the back of the neck and runs down your shirt. And you go, I'm not charging enough for this. $10. You nuts?

Michael Belliveau [00:05:01]:
Yeah.

David [00:05:02]:
Like, screw that noise.

Lucas [00:05:03]:
He doesn't have any of that here, right? He doesn't have any of that here.

David [00:05:08]:
He still has the giant wheels, the stupid truck tires.

Michael Belliveau [00:05:12]:
Now I will say, dump truck. $10 is factory wheels only. There is a. There is a compound to that.

David [00:05:17]:
But I was gonna say.

Lucas [00:05:19]:
And they listen.

David [00:05:20]:
Yeah, but like a trx, Dodge TRX pulls in there, a Ram tr. Whatever the hell. That's enormous tires. They're so heavy.

Michael Belliveau [00:05:28]:
They are. They're enormous.

Lucas [00:05:30]:
In Florida, they still have the squat, right? So the squat.

David [00:05:33]:
Squat's illegal here.

Michael Belliveau [00:05:34]:
Yeah, there's some people that squat. I mean, I'm not a fan, but there I see them.

Lucas [00:05:38]:
See, they lower the back down so far you can't call it.

David [00:05:41]:
Isn't it called the Carolina squat? It is called the Carolina, but it's illegal in Carolina.

Lucas [00:05:47]:
Man, I don't get it.

David [00:05:48]:
Priorities.

Lucas [00:05:49]:
I know, right? They still do it.

David [00:05:51]:
You get wiped out by a hurricane, can't help you. But I'm going to make sure that you don't have the squat.

Lucas [00:05:57]:
I mean, have you ever driven one of those? No, dude, you can't see.

Michael Belliveau [00:06:02]:
It's like a skylight.

Lucas [00:06:03]:
Yeah, dude, you can't see. You just cannot see. You kind of got to hang your head out the window to be able.

David [00:06:08]:
To see and drive big dumb trucks anyway. Just in general. Just like big mud tires. And you're like.

Lucas [00:06:15]:
You just.

David [00:06:16]:
You're trying to turn it. No, no, no, no.

Lucas [00:06:21]:
I've ridden with you. You just can't drive, period.

David [00:06:23]:
I need to like, Corolla. That's it.

Lucas [00:06:25]:
Dude, we. We came back from the same restaurant last night and we're driving separately. And I'm like. I kind of got worried because I pull in, we park the car and we stand there and talk for a few minutes. David's still not here.

David [00:06:36]:
And I'm like, that's my family. They're like, lottie dying. I'm like, hey, we gotta go.

Lucas [00:06:41]:
I passed you.

David [00:06:42]:
What?

Lucas [00:06:43]:
Yeah, you're riding down the road. You change lanes right there in that little town. As we're coming through the little town, when you change lanes, you like go down to 10 mile an hour. So I go around you.

David [00:06:54]:
I Try to drive slow because I'm usually playing on my phone or I'm like looking out the windows, distracted. It's fine. I rely on these rental cars to stop for me because they have all the buttons on the ADAs and all.

Michael Belliveau [00:07:06]:
Yeah.

David [00:07:06]:
So I'm like, yeah, it'll save me. It'll be fine. And hopefully I'm not going fast enough to do any damage to me like personally, the car is going to be destroyed.

Lucas [00:07:15]:
But you know, he's got a real issue with the child warning where it tells you that you better check the backseat. I guarantee you a couple times since we've been here because he brought his family, he's been walking down the aisle way complaining about the fact that the child warning was going on. That is the stupidest thing in the world.

David [00:07:32]:
Do you guys have kids?

Michael Belliveau [00:07:33]:
No, not yet.

David [00:07:34]:
Okay, so I'm just telling you right now, unless you are brain dead, you're not gonna forget your kid. Like you have to be brain dead.

Lucas [00:07:41]:
Yeah, that's true.

David [00:07:42]:
Brain dead as in like you were born stupid and you stayed stupid. Okay, I get that. There's nothing wrong. Help it.

Michael Belliveau [00:07:49]:
Right.

David [00:07:49]:
You were just born, your parents maybe were a little related or whatever and you came out and you're just a little slack jawed, whatever. But then like there are some people that are just, they're just out of it. They're probably narcissists, I don't know. Don't have kids at that point. And like, especially when they're little and it's your first one.

Lucas [00:08:09]:
Yeah.

David [00:08:10]:
You're freaked out to leave the hospital. You're in the car like driving as careful as you've ever driven in your entire life. Mortified that something's gonna happen because this tiny little human is behind you and you just gotta protect her.

Lucas [00:08:24]:
Yeah. That's like you're in.

David [00:08:25]:
Unless you have a boy all of a sudden, in which case you're like, quit your crying.

Lucas [00:08:30]:
I mean. No, no, that's not what it is. Okay, you're speaking from personal experience. You see, what it is is you had a little girl first. And us dads really love our little girls, right?

David [00:08:44]:
It's different. It's so different.

Lucas [00:08:45]:
Our little boys, we love them too, but they're.

David [00:08:49]:
I love. Yeah, absolutely, you love him to death, but at the same time, like, I'm not gonna treat you like my daughter. Yeah, you're not my daughter. You're my son and. Yeah, exactly. Arun that was in here, he just had a boy.

Lucas [00:09:00]:
Yeah.

David [00:09:00]:
And he's like. Yeah. Working on the Bonding thing. And I'm like, there's no bonding. There's no bonding. Like, what are you talking about, bonding? He's like, what? I'm like, there's no. Like, your wife bonded with your. Your son.

David [00:09:13]:
Like, she's gonna baby you. Baby the. The son. You need to slap him around, toughen them up. Yeah, that's. That's. Otherwise, it's just gonna be, like, overly mommying, and then that's it. You.

David [00:09:27]:
You've got to be the counter.

Lucas [00:09:28]:
What happened to you?

David [00:09:29]:
No. Oh, trust me, there was no overly mommying me. You kidding me? Parents barely acknowledged me. They were like, my. My sister was a preemie, and so I was not perfectly healthy. Perfectly normal, relatively speaking. My sister comes out of the preemie, and then they were just for the rest of our lives. Like, my sister got all this preferential treatment.

David [00:09:55]:
Like. Yeah, because she had. She was like, oh, she's sickly and little and half retarded, but whatever.

Lucas [00:10:04]:
It's her own problem.

David [00:10:06]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:10:07]:
So we're at the summit. How'd you end up at the summit? Tell us.

Michael Belliveau [00:10:10]:
So, actually, I reached out to you. You told me about the summit, and.

Lucas [00:10:13]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:10:13]:
Yeah.

David [00:10:15]:
Did you hear that, Kent? Ken.

Michael Belliveau [00:10:16]:
Yeah, I reached out to Jimmy Lee, and he got me in.

Lucas [00:10:20]:
Nice.

Michael Belliveau [00:10:20]:
Came down. Used to do coaching with another company prior. And I really like what I see here, so it's.

David [00:10:25]:
Yeah, it seems good. You can call them out. Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

Lucas [00:10:29]:
We. Never mind. I was gonna. They made it right.

David [00:10:37]:
We released that. We're going to release a video in which we talk about a coaching company not to be named anyway. And we talked about their experience with this coaching company that we didn't name. I'm not saying who it is, but you'll find out. It'll drop here probably next week.

Lucas [00:10:57]:
Yeah. And long story short, they. They. There are definitely some things wrong with the process of capturing this particular client.

Michael Belliveau [00:11:06]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:11:06]:
And so.

David [00:11:07]:
Sales process.

Lucas [00:11:08]:
Yeah, the sales process was, like, broken broken. And it was, like, obvious broken. Now they made it right. Like, they literally did. I will give them a ton of credit. They did the right thing. Right. It shouldn't have happened in the first place, but they did do the right thing.

Lucas [00:11:21]:
I will. I will give them that. That was. That was very honorable on their part. They even reached out and said, like, hey, if anybody else says anything, can you make sure they reach out to us and. And we can make sure this is taken care of.

David [00:11:31]:
You know, they could change their tactics rather than trying to fix it on the back end.

Lucas [00:11:35]:
I don't know if you read that thread.

David [00:11:36]:
This is no different than calling every single one star review and throwing money at them to make the review go.

Lucas [00:11:42]:
No, I, I don't think it is. Because. And I'll tell you why is when they reached out and, and like when I made that post, probably five or six people reached out and said, oh, I know who that is. It's this person. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah, it's this person. And everybody said the same person. And so I called the person.

David [00:12:01]:
Salesperson. Yeah, okay.

Lucas [00:12:02]:
So I re, I reached back out to my friend. He's like, yeah, that's who it was. And then the, the guy who recommended he talked to that company said like, oh man, I've never heard anything bad. It was this guy. And like, I, dude, I got six messages saying it was this guy. It was this guy. It was this guy. So I think it's a him problem.

Lucas [00:12:21]:
I don't think it's a.

David [00:12:21]:
So how big is the shop?

Michael Belliveau [00:12:23]:
So right now we have a six bay, five bays with an alignment bay. Yeah, it's a nice size shop. It's been open since 2000. We've been in that building since 2015. We're in a, we're in an anchor store plaza. So we have a supermarket, public supermarket in our plaza.

David [00:12:39]:
That's awesome. Nice.

Michael Belliveau [00:12:39]:
It's a nice all of the traffic. Yeah, they just opened up a little croissant restaurant right next to us that moved from the downtown to our plaza. They moved their whole business there and they're insanely popular. So it's been huge for us.

Lucas [00:12:53]:
That's awesome.

David [00:12:54]:
So you're going to buy piles of croissants and then give them away to your customers, like, hey, come get your oil change. You can try the croissant for free. And then.

Michael Belliveau [00:13:03]:
That's a good idea. Those croissants are delicious. I have to stay away because carbs.

Lucas [00:13:07]:
Yeah, I'm really glad that there's not a restaurant that close to us.

David [00:13:11]:
I give away girl scout cookies and it's hugely popular. Customers keep coming back and they're like, do I get a cookie? You know Those cookies are six bucks, right? Like, thank you for the $700. They were like, you're excited about the, you're not excited about your safe, reliable vehicle. You're excited about these flipping cookies. And the cookies aren't that good.

Michael Belliveau [00:13:30]:
Well, actually, what we do, the croissant restaurant sells a certain brand of coffee that's a local coffee to us. And we buy the same coffee and give it away for free at our shop.

David [00:13:38]:
So there you go.

Michael Belliveau [00:13:40]:
Free coffee with us. And then go to the. Get your croissant. Or there's a bagel shop too, right around the corner.

Lucas [00:13:44]:
So you just got it made is what you're saying. You got you feeling jelly yet?

David [00:13:50]:
No.

Lucas [00:13:50]:
You got a chicken tendy restaurant next door.

David [00:13:53]:
It's. It's far enough away that it's inconvenient to have a walk over there, bro. It's across the street and, you know, but it's. Those are across the street and, like, down the street a little bit. It's far. It's far enough away that it can't be like, oh, here's a pile of free chicken tendies. There's where you can get them. Like, what.

David [00:14:10]:
What am I going to do with that? They're. They're a little bit cold. They've been sitting out since yesterday.

Anna Belliveau [00:14:18]:
Like, hey, you want a chicken? It's from yesterday.

David [00:14:20]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:14:21]:
Like, hey, man, probably not going to be as tindy as Tinder should be.

Michael Belliveau [00:14:25]:
Leftovers in the back left.

Lucas [00:14:26]:
Yeah, exactly. Dip them in a little bit.

David [00:14:29]:
The little restaurant across the street from the shop. Yeah. She is either closing or moving. What are you gonna do about your.

Lucas [00:14:36]:
Parking if that's the case?

David [00:14:37]:
Well, I stopped the parking thing altogether.

Lucas [00:14:39]:
Because she was being a pain.

David [00:14:40]:
Yeah, she was being a pain in the rear. And she was, like, barking at Juan. She's really nice to me, but she was barking at Juan, which I don't like. So I just said, hey, pull every car if it's been sitting there for longer than, you know, a few months. Just get it towed. Yeah, so we had two cars just towed away. One of them I knew was abandoned. The other one I was looking, I was trying to get the title, and we were like 80% of the way through the process was becoming a huge pain because we couldn't find the, like, actual owner of the vehicle.

David [00:15:10]:
Anyway, so we got those two towed away. And the other ones, we just moved to the other. The other spot. And then we're just. We told her, like, we're not going to. Yeah, we're not going to do anything with you and the daughter of the original owner of the restaurant because they had opened that restaurant. This is how Skeezy is. It was a Latin restaurant.

David [00:15:34]:
She was doing catering and she was selling tamales out of this little restaurant. She wasn't making them herself. There's a much more popular, very popular tortilla tamale restaurant, slash grocery store. Up next town over, very popular, fantastic tortillas. Like, some of the best. And she was buying them frozen from them, like in bulk and then selling them as her own. And then she was doing the catering. They thought they were buying her tamales.

David [00:16:09]:
They weren't. She was making squat. She was buying them frozen, then defrosting, steaming them and then taking them into the. To. To the catering thing. So she wasn't making anything. So poor little Anita, she's Salvadorian. She.

David [00:16:24]:
She buys this former lunch lady and she's like, I've always wanted to own a restaurant. So she buys this business from this lady, and she's like, okay, so show me the recipes. She's like, there's no recipes. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I just. Just order them from San Antonio is the name of the grocery store slash tortilla shop to, like, just buy them from San Antonio. That's what I do. And she's like, you don't even make them? Like, no, I don't make it. I don't make anything.

David [00:16:51]:
I just buy frozen and I steam them. And people like them. Well, yeah, because they make great. But also, this is. This is your restaurant. Like, you should be making the food here. So she makes the tamales herself. And they're very good.

David [00:17:03]:
They're very good. But she does the worst marketing in the whole wide world. Terrible marketing, inconsistent hours because she shows up late. She's the only cook there, and her son smokes weed half the day and just hangs out, so he's not helping. So, like, the business barely functions. So even though she's got some of the best tamales in the city, some of the best in the city, she can't sell any.

Lucas [00:17:29]:
Didn't you try to help her? Didn't you? Like, weren't you going to, like, go?

David [00:17:32]:
I was considering, like, coming in and. And just dumping some money into the business. And, like, hey, we'll split. Like, I'll buy half the business. I'll put it, like, I'll clean up the building, put a signage up and then run ads and. And then, hey, we're gonna come up with, like, three or four, like, stupid menu items. Like, just. Yeah, like, you want fat boy stuff and just feature that on.

David [00:17:56]:
On social media. Like, huge tortas. Just huge tortas. A big, huge freaking guacamole. And then just like. Yeah, stacked up with crazy sauce. And then you put freaking chile rale on top of it. And then you wrap the whole thing inside of a burrito.

David [00:18:12]:
Yeah, like, just the most ridiculous thing. Like that that's gonna get. That's gonna go viral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On top of everything. Yeah, yeah. And. And she could make fantastic chiliquini, but she doesn't.

David [00:18:25]:
She. She just makes the. The tamales and then that's it. And she's got good pupusas, which. Salvadorian. Like, she's got good ones. There's a place down the street, just down the street from our. Like a block down.

David [00:18:37]:
And traditional. I'm in the food. Sorry. Traditional pupusas. Good, good.

Michael Belliveau [00:18:44]:
Yeah.

David [00:18:44]:
Traditional pupusas are not. When they. When they cook them, they cook them just plain on a griddle. Like, there's no fat or anything like that. And they're dry, like. And then you put the salsa on, then you put the cabbage and stuff on, and that's how you eat them. That's. So she makes them like that, like traditional.

David [00:19:03]:
My aunt was married to a Salvadorian, and I ate a lot of pupusas. And I know how they're made traditionally. This place down the street cooks them in grease, just straight grease. So when you get them, they're greasy af. And they are fantastic. They're dripping in grease, and you pick them up and they're so good. So that place is packed all the time. And hers, she barely advertises her pupusas.

David [00:19:30]:
It's so stupid.

Michael Belliveau [00:19:31]:
It sounds amazing.

Lucas [00:19:32]:
I know. Right now.

David [00:19:33]:
Anyway, she's leaving. She's. I don't know where she's going to go. Yeah, she's leaving. And the. The daughter of the original owner that sold her this business that wasn't even a business, that was supposed to also be catering customers, but then she ended up stealing all her catering customers, turned into a whole thing. The daughter of that D bag is now going to take over and open up, you know, Mexican food place there. And doing the same thing, probably doing the exact same thing as what her mom was doing is reselling somebody else's tamales.

Lucas [00:20:05]:
So what's been your biggest takeaway from the Summit so far?

Michael Belliveau [00:20:08]:
Biggest takeaway? I like the renaming of the positions, the specialist and all of that. I think that's because we do a lot of that ourselves. You know, we call it the AC specialist and that kind of thing. And I think our industry really needs to have a blast of professionalism because, like they were saying as a nail technician, I mean, there's a nail place in our thing. So there's. There's 15 technicians in our parking lot already, and none of them are working on cars except for the ones in my shop, you know, so I Think changing those names is going to be big. And just all in all, just getting back to the basics, just remembering the basics that you have to get back to, I think is huge, for sure.

Lucas [00:20:43]:
And, you know, we were talking yesterday. Dori was in here, and. And they do a. What's called a leadership intensive course. Right. And what I like about what the Institute does is it's like this whole holistic concept of running a business. They don't just come in and say, your number needs to be this and do this and counsel you through the one or two times you have the problem. What they're doing is they're developing a foundation the business can sit on.

Lucas [00:21:09]:
Right. And they look at the business and they start working through the process to understand, where are you right now? And then they start saying, okay, we need to fill in this gap and this gap and this gap and this gap. But it's all based on the culture of the organization. It's all based on doing what's right for the people in the organization. Right. So a lot of people that listen to the show will know Michael Smith, who works for the Institute. He's one of the speakers yesterday, and he worked for Fortune 50 and Fortune 500, and he works in mergers and acquisitions and things like that. And so what Michael really brings to the table is a.

Lucas [00:21:46]:
It's kind of cool because there's a complete pathway. The owner that wants to keep the business for 50 years has the opportunity to keep the business for 50 years, and the Institute can coach him through that pathway. And then, you know, how do I pass it on to my child? It can also coach them on, hey, I want to keep it for 10 years, and I want to sell it, and I want to make all this money. Like, they have multiple pathways for every type of shop owner that's part of this organization. And so Michael is a firm believer that if you don't have the culture in your organization that it's not worth anything. Right. Like, if you don't have a organization where the people want to be there and believe in what they're doing and believe in creating a really badass product, it's. It's pretty much like you can't be.

David [00:22:28]:
You can't be an owner that's in the business either. Yeah, you gotta have a management staff, because the minute you sell it, you're the owner.

Lucas [00:22:36]:
Yeah.

David [00:22:36]:
Everybody's gonna quit. Exactly.

Lucas [00:22:40]:
Yes, I agree.

David [00:22:42]:
Yeah. Like, yes, absolutely. 100. If you are the owner and you're head of the organization, everybody looks at you. Everybody came to work for you and you're now not there any longer. They are going to leave.

Lucas [00:22:55]:
It's not so much that I disagree, it's that if you build a system around that and I get the whole manager idea, but if you build a system around the fact that and a lot of these businesses, when they sell, the owner doesn't leave, they're still working for the business for a number of years. Look at, look at that.

Anna Belliveau [00:23:13]:
Sounds awful. No need to retire. Oh, wait, right.

Lucas [00:23:17]:
I'm going to keep.

David [00:23:18]:
Some people don't want to leave. Like they want to keep working, but at the same time, like you're going to half ass crap out of that. This is not your shop anymore. You're not going to give a crap.

Michael Belliveau [00:23:28]:
It would be, it would be more difficult if it wasn't your own feel like, feel like an employee again. That would, that would be different.

Lucas [00:23:33]:
Yeah, really hard. I agree. But I'm just saying look at Carolyn with Shopware and Lisa with 360 payments and, and other businesses that I've worked with that have sold. Where the owner stayed in. Now in our field, it's really tough. So like for instance, in your situation, if the owner had stayed in the business and was working there every day, we heard a story yesterday where the owner stayed for like two weeks and got fired. You know, so I mean, I could see like why that would be tough, you know, but like if they're running a good business, if it's something venture capital wanted to buy, it would be something that the owner is committed to making this thing work, the gamification of it.

Michael Belliveau [00:24:14]:
We were pretty unique in our, the way we got our shop because I actually took a job there. And we're Mike and Anna. The original owners of the shop were Mike and Anna.

Lucas [00:24:23]:
Oh, that's cool.

David [00:24:24]:
That worked out.

Michael Belliveau [00:24:25]:
Mike and Anna met Mike and Anna and he was, you know, just rearing. He was about a year past retirement already and he was looking to pass it on to someone who's not having luck selling the business. And we were needing to work and everyone that was working there was not ready to retire. So you know, we were able to come in. It was about a year process of oh, that's cool. You know, he worked with us directly. It almost felt almost too long. But you know, we were going through the whole process and you know, by the time we took it over, we were so ready to run on our own that, you know, it was just, it felt like the chains had been lifted and we were just ready to go.

Michael Belliveau [00:24:57]:
And by the time we got going, our sales, you know, it increased the first year. I mean, we went from 700,000 to $1.7 million within two years.

David [00:25:05]:
Oh, wow.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:06]:
So, I mean, that was. They were happy doing, you know, a good seven, $800,000 a year. And that was feeding their bills and everything. And for us, this wasn't enough.

Lucas [00:25:15]:
Right. For them, it was comfort.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:17]:
It was comfort.

Lucas [00:25:18]:
They didn't want to push any harder because that's hard work to push. And so for them, it's, hey, we're okay right here.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:24]:
Exactly. You know, they showed me this is where you need to be, and you don't need to have, you know, a huge amount of cars to get to the right level. You know, we just want to push it. I was working in the, you know, BSRO for a long time, and I knew what kind of car count we did there, and I saw the numbers that we did there. And being that we had a tire shop right up the street from us and our building had a Michelin sign on it.

Lucas [00:25:43]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:43]:
And they weren't utilizing it. You know, we just. We turned it into a tire facility and a very, very hardcore mechanical facility that we fix everything in town that comes in.

Lucas [00:25:53]:
Right.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:53]:
You know, for the most part, these cars come in from the other shops that just been.

Lucas [00:25:57]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:25:57]:
You know, worked on and worked on and still not running. Right. You know, right to us. And we finally fix it.

Lucas [00:26:02]:
So let me ask you this. The. The staffing, everybody stayed, I'm guessing because you had had some. Some time there.

Michael Belliveau [00:26:08]:
Not everybody stayed. Believe it or not, when we were shifting over, the lead tech left two weeks before I took it. But we had a new technician that, by the grace of God, he found us online and said, hey. He was actually in an ATI shop. And he's like, I'm looking for somewhere. He's like, I read your reviews. You seem to be the best in town. I want to live here.

Michael Belliveau [00:26:28]:
So he came to us.

Lucas [00:26:29]:
Oh, that's kind of cool.

Michael Belliveau [00:26:30]:
That was amazing. He's been with us ever since, so. No, no, he's been pretty much the new tech that came over with our organization. So between having a new master tech and a new, you know, me as management and then our service writer, we've promoted her to the general manager. So I've essentially pulled myself out of the business because I took six weeks off, you know, a couple of month and a half ago, my father was sick and had open heart surgery, and we were on vacation, and my tech got injured while I was on vacation. In Cancun, and my father was wound up getting. Having to have surgery all while we were on vacation. So when I got back, you know, I was out for four weeks just helping that whole process.

Michael Belliveau [00:27:09]:
And my staff, they did it, and, you know, they flourished while we were gone, so we were very happy about that.

Lucas [00:27:15]:
That's pretty awesome. What caused the original tech to leave was it. He knew it was going to happen.

Michael Belliveau [00:27:19]:
Or to be honest, he was. I think he was just felt the changes were coming, and he was comfortable in what was going on there, and he knew we were gonna really push the boat, and he didn't want to push as hard as we were gonna push. You know, he had some things where he was a little messier and those things. He was good at what he did, but he was a little bit messier, and his bays weren't clean. And, yeah, the oil we scrubbed out of his area when he was gone was kind of insane.

Anna Belliveau [00:27:48]:
I think it was probably a little bit intimidating for him because, you know, the shop, when we got it, it was not on the best condition, so we had to put a lot of love on it. So we start. When we start, like, scrubbing the floors, you know, painting, putting the epoxy, he was like, okay, this is getting serious here.

David [00:28:05]:
Right?

Anna Belliveau [00:28:05]:
And he was probably not willing to put it with all the new stuff because he was really, like, stepping to the old owners. Like, the owner let him do whatever he wanted to do.

Lucas [00:28:15]:
Right. Well. And I mean, we see that so often.

David [00:28:18]:
They had him captive.

Lucas [00:28:19]:
Yeah.

David [00:28:20]:
So I don't want to do the diag. So I'm stuck with this diag guy. Right.

Lucas [00:28:24]:
Well. And they don't want to go looking for somebody else. Right. Because that. That's what I. I think we've seen, I guess maybe call it a death spiral in a lot of shops over the years, because that's what they do is the owner is now tired of looking for people. They're tired of having to fire people. They're tired of this whole thing.

Lucas [00:28:40]:
So if they can just get a group of people who are willing to do what we do right now, and I just don't have to do anything with it, and it just does what it does. Right. I think I see that in my parents. Right. How my parents did it is because they didn't like. It's exhausting finding people, and it's exhausting dealing with their drama. It's exhausting having to manage all of this. And so for my parents, it was just like, hey, you know, we can.

Lucas [00:29:05]:
We can do 300,000, 400,000 in revenue a year, and we can take 90% of it and put it in our pockets, because the only cost we have is cost of goods, of merchandise, the power bill and the gas bill. Right. So if we do $300,000 and we keep 90% of it, that's pretty good money.

Michael Belliveau [00:29:22]:
Right?

Lucas [00:29:23]:
Like, we can have a good life like this. You don't have to do a million to accomplish that in their line of work. So, I mean, I can see it if it's paying the bills and you're comfortable.

Michael Belliveau [00:29:32]:
And to be honest, when we first took it over and it was me and one service writer and two people in the shop, you know, we made plenty of money. I mean, we did very, very well. And pushing it as much more as we did, we don't have as much profit. You know, at the end of the day, there's a lot more going on. There's a lot more people to. So many more exp. Expenses. You know, we've put new lifts in the shop.

Michael Belliveau [00:29:51]:
We put four new lifts. We've repainted the place from head to toe. You know, we've put Christmas lights, permanent Christmas lights all over the building, you know, to make it, you know, be able to light it up with the school that's right behind us, to be able to turn them on to their school colors and they have games and, oh, that's cool. Kind of stuff, you know, because we do parades, so we want to, you know, we're big on the Christmas parade, so we want to make sure we have Christmas lights, you know, controllable all the time. So that kind of thing that we've invested into the building, you know, all those things have made a difference. It made people that didn't know we were here. We were. For 25 years, I was walking around the town and I'm talking to people said, hey, you know about car doctor, like, car who? And that's when I was like, oh, nobody knows we're here.

Michael Belliveau [00:30:31]:
They're doing well, and nobody even knows a business that's been open for 20 years is here.

Lucas [00:30:36]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:30:37]:
All we need to do is make it visible for sure. That was the biggest thing that we did, is I just went on Google, put new pictures, put new paint, all.

Anna Belliveau [00:30:44]:
The company, like, image. We redo the logo, we rebrand everything. Like, but it was the same name, but we make it visible at all.

Lucas [00:30:53]:
That's a really cool point because, like, that's. David's always telling people, hey, go buy an existing shop. And that reignition of whatever that business was, that cleanup process, that. That lighting it back off, if you will, is a huge thing that drives a lot of people in the door. And if it's already been there, you know, they know it, they see it.

David [00:31:17]:
Best way to do it.

Michael Belliveau [00:31:18]:
There's a. There's an influencer. There's a girl, she's Cody Sanchez. She talks about buying businesses. That's what she does is she goes out and buys businesses from boomers, basically. And you know, she says, if you find a fax machine in a business, go buy it.

Lucas [00:31:32]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:31:32]:
Because that fax machine and that's like. I met the owners of the company as I found her online. So I'm listening to her and she's like, you can go buy a business. You don't even have to have much money to do it.

David [00:31:42]:
Right.

Michael Belliveau [00:31:43]:
And it's exactly what we did. We followed the process that I found from her, and then I applied it to our industry.

Lucas [00:31:48]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:31:49]:
And, you know, I found those, and I just want to keep doing that. I think there's a lot of shops that.

David [00:31:54]:
That's fine when you're Cody Sanchez and stuff. She knows the crap out of me. Sorry. But the problem is the. A lot of shop owners that are trying to sell the business and trying to get out of it are delusional. There is a business that is across the street from one of my buildings. It is a import shop. It does 350 to $400,000 a year.

David [00:32:21]:
They have one mechanic. He's been there for 20 years. The owner bought the business. The guy came with it. The business comes with the guy again. He does all the work. They have four bays a size, A good sized plot of land. That is going to be worth a lot of money eventually.

David [00:32:40]:
Right now it's not. I mean, how much would you pay for a $350,000 a year business? Just throw a number out there. What do you think?

Michael Belliveau [00:32:47]:
What would that cost? I wouldn't want to pay more than 70, 80 grand for it, tops.

David [00:32:53]:
Right. Maybe. And you're just being generous at that point. No, the guy wants like $650,000. Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [00:33:01]:
That's insane.

David [00:33:01]:
He wants $650,000 and will not take up any less. And I said, look, I will give you like 50,000 for the business and then we can finance the land. If I can show that the land's worth 500,000. $550,000, we can make that work. And he's like, no, I need 650 forever. You can have everything. But it's 650. That.

David [00:33:26]:
That's it. I don't know how you split it. The. The problem. And I told him, I said, dude, the problem is that the. The land isn't worth, like, 500,000. It's just not worth, like, what. What the building or the business has been paying in rent is, like, way under market value.

David [00:33:42]:
And even then, if I just turned around and put some other random business in this thing, I'm only going to be charging maybe $3,000 a month. The land is not worth $500,000. It's worth, at the most, maybe 200, $250,000. And your business is worthless. It is zero dollars and zero cents. He had to put back in personal expenses onto the P and L. And the P and L was trash. You weren't talking about absolute total garbage.

David [00:34:10]:
The PNL was trash. He was putting in his personal business or personal expenses back into the P and L to then show some kind of profitability, because otherwise they were going to show red on the bottom line. Yeah, he wants $650,000. That is extremely common.

Lucas [00:34:26]:
Yeah, yeah.

David [00:34:27]:
Like, okay, so I got to wait him out 20 years. When he gets sick of it and he's like, I really want to get the hell out of here, then I can walk in and buy it for nothing. But you got to wait that out.

Lucas [00:34:35]:
My friend Derek, you know, that's what we talk about. That's what he went through, is that he goes down there and he's. And here's what's crazy, is there's people who will go and buy it. Right?

David [00:34:44]:
Because 650. Not that. Well, he's still there.

Lucas [00:34:48]:
I've talked to a lot of shop owners who did that exact thing. They got excited. They wanted to go work for themselves. They wanted their own shop. And they did not understand the financials of the business. They didn't understand how to value a business. And they walk in, and this guy says, hey, I want a million and a half for it. And they said, well, I don't have a million half.

Lucas [00:35:05]:
Will you do one to five? The business, in a couple of these instances, was worth 300, maybe $400,000 with the property. And these guys are giving a million and a half for it.

Michael Belliveau [00:35:15]:
Yeah, it's insane.

Lucas [00:35:16]:
Million and a quarter. And so it's important to understand how to value a business. If you're going to buy a business, you need to. Is it Ryan Tunisan that does the business valuations? And, like, I'm talking to these guys, and I'm saying, hey, go talk to Ryan, before you buy a business, have him go in and help you do a business valuation on it. And so they come back and they're like, but that's really expensive. I'm like, hold on. If that's really expensive, there's a problem. You don't need to be buying.

Michael Belliveau [00:35:41]:
The whole business is expensive. Like, that's the least of your worries right now.

Lucas [00:35:45]:
I'm just gonna give a million for something that's worth 200,000. That doesn't sound expensive at all.

Michael Belliveau [00:35:50]:
Now, luckily, we got a good deal on ours. I feel, I think that it was a very fair deal. So finding new ones to buy, though, because I've been looking, looking at the ones that are on, like, biz. Buy something. Don't even think about it. I mean, yeah, for sure. The amount of money that they're asking for these shops, I'm also looking at them and it's insane.

Lucas [00:36:08]:
Yeah. So I. I think that with property, with.

Michael Belliveau [00:36:12]:
With or without property, they're both. You know, some of these shop owners are just insane with the prices that they're asking for.

Lucas [00:36:18]:
I've got a couple that I've got my eyeballs on that I think eventually will. Will change hands. Now, that being said, I kind of ended up with this new task on my plate, and I don't know that I'm ever going to have the bandwidth to do anything else like that. But we'll see.

David [00:36:33]:
But I don't see he's motivated. See the fact that he's walking around, like, talking to Randos, asking him about his business. That's somebody that's motivated and gives two craps. Unless you're doing that, walking up to randos, going, hey, do you know about L and N? Let me give you my card. Unless you're doing that, which I know you're not, so I'm just telling you it's just going to be a giant pain in the ass to have a second shot.

Lucas [00:36:56]:
I just need to point out to you that, that, like, that's what you expect me to do as part of the podcast. And so, like, you like the podcast. I like the shop, too.

David [00:37:08]:
Yeah, I'm sure you say that.

Lucas [00:37:14]:
But. But, you know, that was. That was my thing is I see a couple that. That'll eventually change hands. I have a friend who bought one and we had looked at the shop because it was divided. One of the things we wanted when we bought a shop is I wanted one solid facility that everything was in one place. This one was divided out and my friend bought it. And, man, I look at all of the people in the group, I look at all of the people in ASOC and I look at some of these people who are thinking about starting a shop right now and I just see my poor friend and all of them, right.

Lucas [00:37:47]:
Because what he did was, is he went and he agreed to buy the business for what they were asking. Now I had already looked at the PNL and I said, I don't have the heart to tell this guy it's like not worth 10% of what he's asking right now. And the property is not worth what he thinks it is. And so my friend went down there and bought it for that. And so then what does he do? He goes and he's got the same equipment and he just hires these guys that he's worked with in the past. And he's like, okay, we're going to go fix cars now. And then a while after that we become friends, we start talking and I'm like, bro, I don't know if you know this or not, but your job has nothing to do with fixing cars. And so the businesses are like in these different buildings.

Lucas [00:38:31]:
He's out here working in the car, there's nobody at the front counter. He's trying to be the service advisor at night, right? Service at night, and then come in in the day, work on the cars, diag the cars, give the guys something to do, tell them what to do, and then communicate with the clients as he has time to do it. And I'm like, yeah, that's that work. Yeah, exactly. That's not running the business anymore. Right. Like that's not how you turn it. So guess what? Now he's in a six bay shop by himself and he's like, you know, he runs from one side of the shop to the other side of the shop to answer the phone and like, you know, having to move cars back and forth, I feel terrible for him, but it, it's, it happens, right?

Michael Belliveau [00:39:08]:
I almost subscribe. I have probably too many people in my office. I have three in my office and four in the shop, you know, so it's. Yeah, you need those people. You need to be able to have people to drive people home and all of those things.

Lucas [00:39:19]:
Well, in your model specifically, you run a whole lot more cars than I would run at my shop. Right. Like, because you're kind of in the volume model.

Michael Belliveau [00:39:27]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:39:27]:
And so if you're running volume, dude, just to handle the telephone calls, you need those additional people because I mean, it'll overwhelm you. I mean, my shop's 10 base and. And we're only running. We'll be back to for Tex in two weeks. But I mean, with four tags, dude, it. It will wear you.

Michael Belliveau [00:39:45]:
Absolutely.

Lucas [00:39:46]:
So, I mean, I couldn't imagine doing it by myself. I mean, there's a lot of guys who do it. Jesse Matthews is pretty much by himself. A lot of these other guys.

David [00:39:54]:
He's not running, like, huge, huge following. No. I don't know. I can't deal with any of it. Dump all of it and just run away.

Lucas [00:40:04]:
Is it that bad, David?

David [00:40:05]:
It is that bad. It's miserable. You know, I had this lady come in with a Chevy Cruze.

Lucas [00:40:11]:
Yeah.

David [00:40:12]:
And like every Chevy Cruze oil cooler is leaking, Timing covers leaking, oil pans leaking. We didn't recognize the timing cover. The oil pan was leaking. We thought it was the oil pan. Turned out to be the timing cover. Anyway, so we sell the oil cooler. I had probably 15 phone calls, conversations. She kept calling back, asking more questions and called back, asked more questions, called back, asked more questions.

David [00:40:34]:
And I'm happy to explain. And over explain, I have no problem with that. She finally says, okay, I'm going to go ahead and do the oil. I'm going to go ahead and do XYZ and okay, fine, $4,000. Great. I need 1,800 down. And she's like, okay, great. She gives me the credit card.

David [00:40:51]:
We're cool. They start the work like a week later. We get all the parts. Everything's ready to go. We start the work. The technician is like, tearing up, and he's like, hey, we thought it was the oil pan leaking. It's running down from the timing cover. We just didn't see it.

David [00:41:08]:
It hadn't been sitting in our shop long enough. We had cleaned everything off. We'd done the degrease and the dye and all that, but it hadn't sat in the shop long enough. So after a week of sitting in our shop and moving it around and then pulling it back in to start work, he found the timing cover leaking. So we call the customer and we're like, hey, it's only going to be like another seven or eight hundred dollars. We don't need to do the oil pan. I think if it's part of the process, but whatever. And, like, we're not.

David [00:41:38]:
It's just going to be another like 700. You're already spending four. You've already given me $1,800. It's just another $700. And then it's almost a full engine reseal.

Lucas [00:41:49]:
She freaked out.

David [00:41:50]:
She's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. 17 more phone calls later, she backed out of the entire thing. Says, I'm just going to live with it. I'm going to live with the oil leaks. The car came in with very little oil, by the way. And I told Juan, I'm like, she called 17 other shops to see if she could get a better deal on the whole thing.

David [00:42:11]:
Yeah. Because at this point, she. And she's like, I'm starting to regret this.

Lucas [00:42:14]:
Yeah.

David [00:42:15]:
And he's like, I don't know. I mean, I was called that.

Lucas [00:42:20]:
I really think the tech should have caught that.

David [00:42:21]:
I understand. We sold the oil pan. Turned out to be the timing cover. Whatever. It just didn't sit in our shop long enough. And honestly, like, it didn't sit in your shop long enough after we had cleaned it off.

Lucas [00:42:33]:
Did you take it and drive it?

David [00:42:34]:
It got driven, it got ran. It got put on the lift. And you inspect. The oil cooler was puking. So there's your. Like, your main leak there. The timing cover was leaking as well, but just at a much slower rate. So at that point, like, okay, but the fact that the car sat in our shop, sat and then got moved and then sat and moved and sat and moved and sat and moved.

David [00:43:03]:
The other leak started to come out, started to reveal itself. At that point, it's. Whatever it happens, it does.

Lucas [00:43:11]:
I'm not saying it doesn't.

David [00:43:12]:
I'm not that upset that they didn't catch it. I'm not that upset that they didn't catch it. I'm just annoyed. Like, there's just no the logic. I just don't get the logic. I don't care. I don't need the money. It's just like, it's another two days in the shop.

David [00:43:25]:
Like, I don't care about any of that. It's the. Hey, lady. Look, I need a return on my investment. I have sat on the goddamn phone with you, answering your inane, idiotic, emotionally driven, vapid questions for the last, like, week and a half with a smile on my face, expending all of my emotional energy on you, and you are backing out of the repair for what reason? $700. You're spending 5. What do you care about the 700? Do you want the car to run or not? Yes.

Lucas [00:44:06]:
Then fix it. But. But, like, he and I don't have, like, the same connection to the car. You do. I. I am doing a lot better about this connection to the car.

David [00:44:19]:
It's the logic. I just don't understand it. So stupid.

Lucas [00:44:23]:
Why does it affect you so much?

David [00:44:26]:
Dude, she. She lives in Missouri. She drove like 10 miles to come to my shop because she found us online. She left the car at our shop for like a week and a half. The first, the first day we inspected it and then we told her that we need to clean and read and grease. And then she hemmed and hot on that. And then she's been without a car for a week and a half. Do you think that is so much.

Lucas [00:44:49]:
Starting to question you. And she doesn't, she didn't trust you in the first place and now this happened. So now she really doesn't trust you.

David [00:44:55]:
She does. Look, she's one of those that doesn't trust anybody. The reason why she came to us is because she lost trust in the last shop she was at. But I explained to her like, listen, I don't. You're a flat rate shop, right?

Michael Belliveau [00:45:07]:
Yeah, yeah.

David [00:45:07]:
Okay, so I trash on flat rate shops. I get on the phone with these customers and I go, look, we're not on commission. I don't care whether you buy a goddamn thing from me or not. My technicians get paid regardless. I get paid nothing. And the shop makes the same amount of money like it doesn't matter. You can do whatever the hell you want, but the shop you were just at, everybody's on commission.

Lucas [00:45:30]:
Was the other shot, right?

David [00:45:31]:
Christian brothers, what?

Lucas [00:45:33]:
Were they right?

David [00:45:34]:
No, no, no. They had diagnosed P0420, they had put a caloric converter on the car. Leaves P0420 comes back, they come back, they re diagnose it needs another caloric converter. Is it really the Calor converter, do you think? No, it's not, it's not. I'm just throwing that out there. It's not the catalytic converter. Anyway. They put another catalytic converter.

David [00:45:59]:
I'll tell you in a second. They put another catalytic converter on there. She leaves, guess what? P0420 comes back again. She brings it back again and they look at it and they're like, looks like this mid pipe is leaking. The one right next to the flipping oxygen sensor. Did it even need a catalytic converter to begin with? Probably not. It's a cruise. Like they have the same seven problems on all of them, including that mid pipe.

David [00:46:34]:
And also the spark plugs were sketchy, but whatever. Like that was in our repair, throwing new spark plugs in there. And I told her, I said, look, catalytic converters don't go Bad that often. Especially like to certain models you just don't see that often. And the Cruz is one of them. The turbo blows out, the oil cooler blows out, the timing cover blows out, the valve cover blows out and this mid pipe blows out.

Lucas [00:46:57]:
I just want you to know, I don't know if you've been in the group this morning and read anything, but you're triggering poor Jesse Matthews right now. He's just gone through this exact scenario.

David [00:47:05]:
What did he throw a bunch of catalytic converters on a cruise?

Lucas [00:47:08]:
Looks that way. And valve covers. And he gave all their money back and everything else.

David [00:47:13]:
People, listen, listen, I'm just. What's me and you right now we're talking, okay? Buy a five gas exhaust analyzer. They're not that expensive. And by the time you've given away three catalytic converters, you will have paid for the stupid exhaust gas analyzer, right? Do you have one?

Lucas [00:47:34]:
No.

David [00:47:35]:
Worthless shop. But I'm not gonna ask you. You're a flat rate shop. You definitely don't have one.

Lucas [00:47:42]:
But maybe do you have one?

David [00:47:45]:
Ah geez. I quit. I quit, quit, quit.

Lucas [00:47:50]:
Maybe, maybe we should have Dori back in here and let her have a talk with you and try to understand why. Do you?

David [00:47:57]:
No, she's gonna be like. But the people, they feel happy right? About not having a five gas exhaust analyzer. How are you gonna condemn the supercalor converter if you don't even have one those. How? How? You tell me lots of ways.

Lucas [00:48:14]:
Like what? Let me ask you this.

David [00:48:16]:
What you're maybe process. Maybe. I don't know. I give it to my tech. I'm. Look, if I were.

Lucas [00:48:22]:
I just want to understand like if what, how are we going to use the 5 gas analyzer?

David [00:48:26]:
Look, look, listen, listen. If you have a. Do you have an exhaust pressure gauge, A back pressure gauge. Okay, so if it fails that you're going to put a c. A C converter on. Okay, but here's the thing. What caused it to fail? Because on its own it's not gonna go bad. Something caused it to fail.

David [00:48:42]:
So you need to find the underlying cause. Numbnuts at Christian Brothers couldn't be bothered. Why they got 0.7 for the Diag. Because their own flat rate. So they in the 0.7 said bad cat. How are you gonna expect them to run through the whole process and said we're gonna check the spark plugs. We're gonna do a five gas exhaust analyzer check and see if my hydrocarbons are high or my O2 is high. Whatever Right.

David [00:49:11]:
They're gonna look at the numbers and then determine based on the condition of the spark plugs. They're gonna check the air filter, they're gonna check maybe a few parameters on the PIDs, and then they're gonna inspect the exhaust system and look for leaks. And hey, the oxygen sensors, are they even working? Is the front one slower to respond? You can't do that in an hour. That's insane.

Lucas [00:49:33]:
I don't disagree.

David [00:49:34]:
I charge like 2 1/2 hours for cats codes. I do and I tell them, look, I'm going to sell you a fifteen hundred dollar cat, but the reason why I'm going to charge you for two and a half hours is like, we got to check all this other stuff because I don't want you to come back and tell me that the cat that I just installed is throwing another code because it ain't the cat. I don't know how you diagnose him. Poor Eric, he's making bad calls and then you blame him and then you blast them on the Internet. And the whole time he just needs a five gas exhaust analyzer.

Lucas [00:50:06]:
Listen, his nose is the best gas you've ever seen, man. He'll be fine. Did you see the video? Did you happen to see the video?

David [00:50:16]:
Is it a new one?

Lucas [00:50:17]:
No, no, it's the same one. I'm just saying he's got.

David [00:50:19]:
Where he's scratching his ass.

Lucas [00:50:21]:
Yeah, just a wonderful gas analyzer there. I just don't understand why you have such a connection to the car that, like, I used to be that way, but like, it doesn't upset me, it doesn't make me mad now. Do you get upset?

Michael Belliveau [00:50:33]:
I don't get upset over them anymore.

Lucas [00:50:35]:
Yeah, I mean, just, it's just a thing, right?

Michael Belliveau [00:50:37]:
I don't have to drive the car, so.

Lucas [00:50:38]:
Yeah, it's not. What, what was it Tanika said? My car's out front, it runs just fine.

David [00:50:44]:
I don't, I can't, I can't. I don't know. I don't get it. I just. I don't know. I don't understand. I don't. I don't get it.

Lucas [00:50:50]:
You're going to get online and you're going to start selling medical products that people can inject. And then somebody's going to message you back and say, it's going to be.

David [00:50:57]:
Powder, it's going to be okay. In fact, I just got the email from the guy. He said, hey, how much do you want to order?

Lucas [00:51:04]:
David accidentally buys four kilos of cocaine.

David [00:51:09]:
Hey, it's Made in the usa. It's actually made in Nebraska. It's going to be the only of this product that's made in the US because everything else is either made in Germany, which has a very particular name brand to get the German, or it's made in China. But everybody's like, oh, just get the Walmart stuff. It's super cheap. It's like, yeah, I get it. Because 5 year olds made it slave labor. Poor Uyghur Muslims are sitting there like chiseling away, making your powder, then shipping it over and selling to you for $14.

David [00:51:41]:
And you're wondering why I'm charging 60, I'm charging 60. Because the shit's made in the USA. In a legit factory with paid workers.

Lucas [00:51:51]:
He's convinced that there will be no more customer problems once he goes, no, no, no, no.

David [00:51:55]:
But here's the thing, here's the thing. You can do like mine, the dollar amount is low enough that if you bitch, I'm just going to go, refund, gone, done out of my life. The GP on each one of these products is like 70% and I have done no work. Do you understand? I have done no work. You've done no work. Now that's true, that's true. I stress a lot.

Lucas [00:52:23]:
I don't know how much less you could do.

David [00:52:26]:
I stress a lot because there's a lot of responsibility because I have employees, they got to get paid. I have only ran ads. That's it. The fulfillment is done by the manufacturer. So they are making it, slapping my label on it and then throwing it into a box and then shipping it to the customer, the customer then. And then all I do is my follow up on the background on the back end and hey, share this all over social media how great this product is. You're gonna get, you're gonna have be so happy, you're gonna be so healthy, everything's gonna be great. Your whole life's gonna change.

David [00:52:57]:
And you know what? Although the product itself is not going to change their lives, it is the first step towards a complete transformation of their life. And so they're gonna be able to like blast it all over the Internet. Everybody's gonna be happy and it's a product that they want and they're gonna be happy with it. And a little bit that like once you buy it and you take it psychologically, like if you feel like it does something, even though like you shouldn't feel much of anything, it does it all in the background. But whatever, people just think, whatever.

Lucas [00:53:26]:
You ever seen that that's not the.

David [00:53:28]:
Same thing as car repair. Like that lady should have fixed the flipping car because her jalopy was falling apart and for some God forsaken reason she just decided that $700 is the breaking point.

Lucas [00:53:39]:
I don't know if you know this, but you were accidentally invited to a David therapy session.

Michael Belliveau [00:53:43]:
I could tell.

Lucas [00:53:44]:
Yeah, I just like he's slightly broken. You ever seen the episode of King of the Hill where where Hank goes and his bait shop that he's been using for all these years blows up.

Michael Belliveau [00:53:54]:
And seen that one?

Lucas [00:53:55]:
Yeah. So the, the bait shop blows up and he starts buying bait somewhere else in just a few months. That's going to be David. Okay, I'm just going to say go watch that episode. Watch what happens. I'm telling you, that is like, that is going to be David. It is, that is. It's in his future, I promise.

Michael Belliveau [00:54:11]:
Can't let the car stress you out as much. Yeah, dude, like, doesn't bother me. It used to bother me.

Lucas [00:54:17]:
Yeah, it used to. And, and I've got better and I put place that, I put people in place and just let them handle it. You know, you accuse me of meddling, but I'm. I'm starting to think maybe you're like, it's this self realization that you're putting what you do on me.

David [00:54:32]:
I don't medal, dude. I really don't medal. I'm just telling you.

Lucas [00:54:35]:
Yeah, but I mean like I've not been engaged with my shop at the level that you're talking about being engaged with your shop in a long time. Right. Like I've not had those conversations with clients. I've not.

David [00:54:45]:
My shop manager had a day off so I had to work in the shop that day.

Michael Belliveau [00:54:49]:
That's never fun.

David [00:54:51]:
Right? He knows. Like you had to work the whole day in the shop. The whole day. I had to be there. I had to check the cars in, I had to dispatch them, I had to call the customers, I had to order the parts. I had to put the parts in the right place. I was supposed to do some of this other work here. I didn't do it.

David [00:55:06]:
I had to QC the car. I didn't do it. I made my text to it. I had to call the customer, I had to wait for them to show up. I had to pay all that garbage. I had to do all of that. It was awful. It was awful.

Anna Belliveau [00:55:15]:
And then on top of that, the lady, I don't want to reverse.

David [00:55:18]:
Right. And on top of all that, after hours on the phone, she's like.

Lucas [00:55:24]:
What.

David [00:55:25]:
Are you talking about?

Michael Belliveau [00:55:27]:
For me, it's just. I just think about it like, you came to us. We gave you the right answer. If you choose not to take the answer and you want to drive a broken car. Yeah, it's your business driving a broken car.

Lucas [00:55:38]:
And if something.

David [00:55:39]:
If that were off of one conversation, don't care. Goodbye, see you. Go die. Enjoy your life. The few minutes you'll have it as your court falls apart. I don't care. But if you and I were on the phone, 1, 2, 3, 15,000 times, and we just answered all your questions, and then you're like, Then you give me money. Like, we're done, this is over.

David [00:56:04]:
And then she backs out.

Lucas [00:56:05]:
Here's the. Here's the real problem, okay? If you want to know what really upset him, it's that that was the only $1,800 in the checking account. So if he had.

David [00:56:13]:
At the time. Yes, at the time. Yes, at the time, yes.

Lucas [00:56:19]:
But maybe that's what upset you.

David [00:56:21]:
I don't. I know I'm going to end up. She's coming to pick up the car on Monday. I'm going to issue a free fund and, you know, goodbye, go choke and die. I don't care. Like, go away. It's just the amount of time I spent on this customer. Like, I just.

David [00:56:37]:
I want my time back. That's all I want. I don't care about the money, don't care about the car. I don't care about her. I want my time back. But, I mean, all that time and energy, that time and energy I spent on you, I need that back.

Lucas [00:56:49]:
Yeah.

David [00:56:49]:
But here's whatever compensation you can provide for the time and energy I provided. You sucked some of the life out of me. I need that life back.

Lucas [00:56:57]:
But you have this idea that everything else isn't going to be this way. Everything else is the same thing. If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it, right?

David [00:57:05]:
The podcast is like that.

Lucas [00:57:07]:
Well, I know, but that should go. Listen, you're trading something for the podcast success. You're trading your dignity, because everybody knows you're a jackass, right?

David [00:57:18]:
Here's the thing. I'm no different on the podcast, and I'm off the podcast.

Lucas [00:57:23]:
I know.

David [00:57:24]:
I'm at least enjoying my time and getting a trip to Florida out of it.

Lucas [00:57:29]:
Maybe next time we should just go to dinner and record ourselves at dinner. I mean, it's pretty much the same thing.

David [00:57:34]:
Yeah, there you go.

Lucas [00:57:36]:
He does this at dinner, too, I believe. In the middle of a restaurant.

David [00:57:39]:
I Don't start screaming in the middle.

Lucas [00:57:40]:
Of a restaurant, bro. I will never forget the time that that shop manager I had where he was, like, talking smack about me and accidentally sent me the text message. You were doing this exact thing in the restaurant at that exact time. You can't pull that on me. The Patriots had lost, and you were losing your mind.

David [00:58:00]:
That was a long time ago.

Lucas [00:58:03]:
It was like a year ago.

David [00:58:04]:
It wasn't Shannon. That was like, 2019, dude.

Lucas [00:58:07]:
Was it? Yeah, I guess. Tom Plaza.

Michael Belliveau [00:58:10]:
It feels like a year ago, right?

Lucas [00:58:11]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, what. I mean, what do you say to somebody like this?

Michael Belliveau [00:58:18]:
We need to just relax, just chill a little bit. It's not that bad.

Lucas [00:58:22]:
Yeah, I mean, like, worse things have happened. And so my dad, he's going to hate me for saying this. My dad and a group of his friends have spent years looking for the silver bullet to get super wealthy or things that are just going to make this huge impact. And if I've taken anything away from that, it's like, there is nothing like that right now. Once you have a few million in the bank and it is just liquid cash sitting there and you don't need it for daily operations, you can take that $2 million and you can do some amazing things with it, and you can really turn quick and make a bunch of money. But there is no silver bullet that doesn't come with risk and work and everything else that you're going to make money with. And that's because anything that's like that, somebody's already scooped up and they've done it in such a way that you can't compete with them. Right.

Lucas [00:59:13]:
And they've grown it to such a point that they are the bull in the marketplace and you can't touch them.

Michael Belliveau [00:59:17]:
Exactly.

Lucas [00:59:18]:
And so I just don't think that there's any one thing that's like, the solution to the problem. Everything's going to have hard work, everything's going to have stress, everything's going to have upset clients. If you work with the. And so it's just. I mean, like the tourist attraction thing, they have upset clients, and we have to deal with that, and people get hurt and things have to be dealt with.

David [00:59:38]:
Right. The difference, though, the difference is. The difference is just imagine you're 100% correct. There's a frozen custard place in our town. Right. It's a chain. They sell the best frozen custard. It is phenomenal.

David [00:59:57]:
But if you go online, they have, like, three and a half stars on Google now. What? On God's green earth possesses somebody to leave a one star review because they didn't get their correct amount of sprinkles. Yeah, like, what is wrong with people?

Lucas [01:00:10]:
What? Where is this?

David [01:00:11]:
At Andes.

Lucas [01:00:13]:
Oh, right there on the corner at college and like, up the road a little bit.

David [01:00:18]:
That's Freddy's. I'll take you to Andy's when you come.

Lucas [01:00:20]:
No, Andy's is right there. Isn't it like, right next to the Chick Fil A?

David [01:00:23]:
Yes.

Lucas [01:00:24]:
You turn right at college. From college and go up the hill.

David [01:00:29]:
It's not on College one.

Lucas [01:00:31]:
I know it's not on college. I'm saying you turn off of college to the right and go up the hill and go like towards where that fire was that time.

David [01:00:38]:
Maybe. Yeah.

Lucas [01:00:40]:
There is one AMC and everything.

David [01:00:42]:
There's way, there's one way down there. Yeah, there is one way down there.

Lucas [01:00:45]:
Yeah.

David [01:00:46]:
But I don't go to that one. I go to the other one. Anyway, they leave like a 1 star reviews on frozen custard. You're there to, like, get fat and happy. That's what you're there to do. It's ice cream.

Michael Belliveau [01:01:00]:
Ice cream.

David [01:01:00]:
It is like the most. And you don't. Like. The only reason why you're there is because you want to get fat and happy. You have the money for it. You don't need it. Right. It's all stuff people want, and then you get upset by it.

David [01:01:13]:
So I get what you're saying, but it's still something you're selling that people just want. You see what I'm saying? It's just like, hey, I don't need it, but I have the money for it and therefore I want it?

Lucas [01:01:28]:
Is it possible that you've just told yourself to such a degree that the whole problem is they don't want what I'm selling, so they're assholes about it. So I'm gonna be mad about it and they're mad at me and like, maybe it's not as bad as you actually think it is.

David [01:01:40]:
I don't love what I'm selling. That's what it is. I don't love what I'm selling. Like, I, I, I buy my own product. You have to buy your own product. Otherwise, like, how do you even sell it? Right? You have to buy your own product.

Lucas [01:01:53]:
Do you love yourself?

David [01:01:55]:
It's not me personally.

Lucas [01:01:57]:
I was just gonna say if you love yourself, you could become a prostitute.

David [01:02:03]:
I love my texts. My texts do good work.

Lucas [01:02:05]:
Okay, then you love what you're saying.

David [01:02:06]:
I have no I I have no problem dropping off there. But I hate, I hate car repairs personally. If something breaks on my car, I get so mad and a piece of shit mother effort car. And unless it is critical, as in I can't keep the car running, it doesn't get fixed f that thing. I'm not spending money on it.

Michael Belliveau [01:02:29]:
Complete opposite. Complete opposite than that. My car makes a noise. I'm like, I own a shop. This thing needs to be perfect. Get it in there now.

David [01:02:35]:
Yeah, just see, that's what I'm talking about. Like not me there. Like, he wants the car perfect. That makes sense. That makes sense. And then therefore you just going to sort of take that approach is like, don't you want your car perfect? I want my car perfect. No, I'm the. Hey, is it running? Will we get to the point A, from point A to P in fairly safe fashion? Yes.

Lucas [01:02:56]:
You didn't used to be this way though. Like, what, what happened?

David [01:02:59]:
I'm pretty sure I've always been this way.

Lucas [01:03:01]:
No, no, no, no. It's like gotten dramatically worse. No, I'm just, I'm tell the episode started, episode one. Go all the way through. You've got like worse and worse and worse. You hate it more now than you ever have before.

David [01:03:13]:
I do hate it more now.

Lucas [01:03:14]:
More of a visceral.

David [01:03:15]:
That's because I've gotten older and it thinks of like they're as good as they've ever been.

Lucas [01:03:21]:
The first thing you say to me in the morning is how much you hate your shop. And the last thing you say to me in a text message at night is how much you hate your shop.

David [01:03:27]:
I don't. It's not. I don't hate my shop. I don't hate my shop. I hate shops in general. I hate his shop. I hate your shop. I hate everybody's shop.

David [01:03:35]:
I hate shops. I hate cars. I hate that they need repairs.

Lucas [01:03:39]:
Do you think it's gonna do the same thing about your medical device website when you get done with it? Like, are you gonna hate it too?

David [01:03:46]:
You know what my techs think I'm selling?

Lucas [01:03:48]:
What?

David [01:03:48]:
Penis pumps.

Lucas [01:03:51]:
Well, you probably need one at this rate.

Michael Belliveau [01:03:56]:
That's what I mean.

David [01:03:59]:
What kind of penis pump are you gonna sell, David? I'm like, what are you talking about?

Lucas [01:04:05]:
Well, I mean, you look, you have been buying the tilatophil or whatever it is.

David [01:04:09]:
It's low dose. Listen, it's good. It's good for the heart. It is low dose Cialis. It's very good for the heart. Five milligrams A day. I'm telling you, you should jump on it. Did I send you some?

Lucas [01:04:22]:
Yeah, yeah.

David [01:04:22]:
Did you take it?

Lucas [01:04:23]:
It's a massive headache.

David [01:04:24]:
Does it really? Yeah, that is a side effect.

Lucas [01:04:27]:
Yeah. Terrible headache. Can't take it.

David [01:04:30]:
5 milligrams. You need to cut it in half. Yeah, down to. Down to three. It. Oh, you're doing the drops?

Lucas [01:04:36]:
Yeah.

David [01:04:37]:
You didn't cut it down to three. See how you feel.

Lucas [01:04:40]:
It doesn't have any measurement in there. I just dip the whole.

David [01:04:43]:
That's what you're.

Michael Belliveau [01:04:44]:
Oh, goodness.

David [01:04:45]:
You're taking 50? Oh, my God. Yeah, you're taking 50. No wonder you're getting headaches. Oh, my God.

Anna Belliveau [01:04:52]:
That's why you may live. Let me just get a whole shot of this.

David [01:04:59]:
Yeah, that's like old guy in nursing home wanting to get it on dose.

Lucas [01:05:05]:
Ooh, I don't want that.

David [01:05:06]:
50 to 100 milligrams is what they take to. Just to get things moving. You didn't need five. Gonna give yourself a heart attack. Don't play around with medication, folks. Don't play around with medication.

Lucas [01:05:23]:
This dude injects like 15 different things a day.

David [01:05:26]:
I want to see what they do.

Lucas [01:05:28]:
How's that work out for you so far?

Michael Belliveau [01:05:32]:
Stress.

Lucas [01:05:32]:
Yeah, well, he got very emotional a while back. It was a thing, you know, I.

David [01:05:37]:
Got off of a bunch of medications and made my. My testosterone drop quite a bit. But we're good. We're fine now.

Lucas [01:05:46]:
We're fine. Pretty emotional. Just in the other direction.

David [01:05:51]:
I'm just. Yeah, now I'm overly angry.

Lucas [01:05:54]:
But hey, it is a big improve. We're not crying every day.

Anna Belliveau [01:05:58]:
You know, you can actually have a conversation.

Lucas [01:06:00]:
Yeah.

Anna Belliveau [01:06:01]:
Are you okay?

David [01:06:01]:
Yes, I'm okay. Talk to me. That is the thing that was happening. That was totally happening. That is a thing.

Lucas [01:06:08]:
I mean, I. I don't know. Like, I. I just don't see why it bothers him so much right now.

Michael Belliveau [01:06:14]:
I don't get bothered.

Lucas [01:06:15]:
Yeah, at a time it bothered me, but like, now it's just like me.

David [01:06:19]:
Did it ever bother you like it.

Michael Belliveau [01:06:21]:
Did when I worked for corporate? Oh, I was mean. I was super mean. Like, that was before I met her. She didn't know me when I worked for corporate, but. Oh, there was 70 hour weeks and. Yeah, you know, it's not your shop, you know, so you're dealing with all of that. And then.

Lucas [01:06:33]:
Yeah, it's like I'm not getting anything.

Michael Belliveau [01:06:35]:
Not getting anything out of this.

David [01:06:36]:
Like.

Michael Belliveau [01:06:37]:
Good job with the P. Ls. Thanks. Where's mine?

Lucas [01:06:40]:
Well, I Think that what happens? And. And so that was one of the things that. In that leadership intensive that they talked about. It's like you expect them to own the task, but you don't expect them to own the reward. And so how do we connect those two things? Right? How is this the reward if all it is is a paycheck? Because we want. Meaning, we want to feel like we've accomplished something. We want purpose in life. And so if you can't connect those two things, right, your employees will never truly find happiness in that scenario.

Lucas [01:07:12]:
And so that's something that they talk about throughout that entire leadership course, is how do we develop that in our organizations? And so it's. It's exactly what you just talked about.

David [01:07:23]:
What.

Lucas [01:07:23]:
What inspired you to get into the automotive field in the first place.

Michael Belliveau [01:07:28]:
Though a paycheck was my original inspiration. I was. It was 2008 when I got in and I was selling furniture. 2008, our economy crashed. Furniture wasn't exactly a hot commodity to sell. So for sure, I had a friend who was working at a tire shop and said, hey, you want to come sell some tires? And, yeah, started selling tires. And. And the rest is kind of history.

Michael Belliveau [01:07:46]:
I tried to get out two or three times. I went and started a landscaping company. I went and worked for pest control and, you know, tried to do my own business, and none of them really kicked off. And at the end of the day, I felt like, man, I'm trying to sell something that I don't have as much knowledge about. And I just went back to cars every single time. Back and back to cars, for sure.

Lucas [01:08:06]:
Well, you know, that. That's kind of like when he talks about his business that he wants to start. And I was talking about my dad. One of the things that I saw those people do over and over again is they kind of, like, dilute their effectiveness, right? Because, like, if you're focusing where you're strong, if you focus where you have knowledge and capability and you're working in an area where you really have control and can maneuver, then you're very effective. But they go and they start these other businesses and they lose the effectiveness because they don't know what they're necessarily doing, and they have to learn it all over again. And they're starting from scratch, and they're starting from the ground up. So the amount of energy it takes to generate the same amount of return is much higher. So it's exhausting.

Lucas [01:08:46]:
And I wonder about that with him. Is it just. I truthfully think, dude's so Smart that he gets bored really easy. And this is not that he's angry at the client. It's that he's bored because he's not exerting all of this energy that turns into anger, into something where he can, like, see something happen. He needs to see something happen. And so, like, he'll work really hard at the shop. Okay, now it's doing what it's supposed to do.

Lucas [01:09:09]:
Now I'm bored with it. I hate it. This sucks. And then it's. I'll work really hard on the podcast and I'll get the podcast to grow for a while. And now I'm bored with it and it's boring and it sucks and I hate this. And now it's like, okay, we're going to sell medical devices and, and pumps and whatever else it is he's going to sell, you know, like. And so I think that, that boredom can be dangerous if you don't have, like a pathway.

Lucas [01:09:31]:
And so, like, I often question whether or not I wanted another coach or if I wanted to work with a coaching organization. I do not like group coaching. Okay, I'll just put that out there. It does not work for me. It's a personal thing. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying I don't like it. Yeah, I don't enjoy it.

Lucas [01:09:51]:
But I think that a coach continues to push you further and further and further along to keep you invigorated and to keep you moving. And if you don't have that, you end up getting bored because you just feel like, hey, I'm there.

Michael Belliveau [01:10:05]:
And I. And I can relate to that because, you know, I've put the staff in place and they, they do very well and they do it. And there's days where, okay, like 10:00 in the morning, I'm bored because it's like, yeah, everyone's rolling around and I got. I can start working on my. That's when I start getting myself into trouble with other things and I get ideas.

Lucas [01:10:21]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [01:10:21]:
So that's where a coach would be, you know, beneficial. Because when you're bored, you can. Okay.

David [01:10:25]:
I started a podcast. That's what I do.

Michael Belliveau [01:10:28]:
I actually, I'm working on the same thing myself, actually.

Lucas [01:10:30]:
Nice. So are you gonna do like a business facing or like a client?

Michael Belliveau [01:10:34]:
Something like a. Almost like a motivational business kind of. It's not automotive based, but.

Lucas [01:10:39]:
Right.

Michael Belliveau [01:10:39]:
We're actually. It's called Exchange for Growth and it's just going to be. You have to exchange something to grow and you know me as I later in life is when I kind of got my feet wet. You know, I kind of was through my 20s and 30s, I was like almost accepting, okay, I'm just going to be an employee somewhere. And I tried those couple little things where I tried to do, you know, I had a paper route when I was 12, you know, I had a landscaping company when I was 12 and then I gave that all away and then I started landscaping again and you know, 25 and then gave it away again and then did it again. Just something to get out of the grind of being an employee. And then when the shop came up to actually I found the opportunity to buy the shop, it was so out of reach for me because it's such an expensive thing to do. And being able to get it and having that pathway, it really helped me forward.

Michael Belliveau [01:11:24]:
Now I feel like I want to help more people because for sure I got out of the rat race myself and that can help more people do so.

Lucas [01:11:32]:
I think that's where most shops need to be focusing as far as, even if not the property, the business itself. They should be looking at employees to purchase that business and start building a plan right now. Because what does it do? It helps you retain that employee, whether it's a technician, whether it's management, whatever it may be. It helps you retain them and keep them engaged in the business. Because we know the pathway is you're going to buy this business. Now there's talks from a lot of shop owners in a bigger organization where they're saying, hey, we're going to take this business and we're going to divide it amongst all the employees. It's going to be entirely employee owned and they're going to take it and run with it. And then one day I'll step out of it and they just pay the lease on the business or whatever it may be.

Lucas [01:12:13]:
But I think that shop owners should be looking at this, especially if they have on their Runway, I'm going to retire, right? They should be looking at somebody in the business to take it. Now I say that, but if you talk to Michael Smith or Cecil or any of them, I'm sure you've seen what's happened in collision with all the collision shops. The mergers and acquisitions consume 90% of the collision industry. I mean, it just vanished just like that. And so that is a much different space to work in if all of your competitors are venture capital and private equity. Right? Because they, they've got the money. They will advertise you straight out of business. If they have to.

Lucas [01:12:51]:
And so it's, it's working with something completely different than, than most of our industries ever worked with. And so I think that it's time for a lot of shops to decide what direction are they going.

David [01:13:02]:
Yeah.

Lucas [01:13:02]:
And if, if not now, I think you've got a really cool advantage because you worked for companies that were in that space.

Michael Belliveau [01:13:08]:
Yeah.

Lucas [01:13:09]:
So you know, and see how they operate and you know what they do and you know how to make the same kind of money they make. So I think you've got an advantage there that a lot of shops don't have.

Michael Belliveau [01:13:17]:
I purposely, throughout the years, I got my feet wet in almost everything to do with cars. I worked for the dealerships. I was a service writer at GM for a while. I worked for the parts store. I was a commercial manager and store manager for the parts stores. I worked for independent shops. I've worked for corporate. So I've kind of tried it all.

Michael Belliveau [01:13:34]:
I even did career work. So I ran a tow truck, worked in a body shop.

Lucas [01:13:39]:
You have done it all?

Michael Belliveau [01:13:41]:
I've, I've tried it all. You know, part of it was the shop had a tow truck go grab a car, you know, but you know, I've, so there's not many things within my area in my state where you can tell, you can't BS me and tell me this is happening. I can tell you straight up now you're lying to me. You know, vendor.

David [01:13:56]:
Right.

Michael Belliveau [01:13:56]:
You know, nobody can play that game. And that helps us out a lot. And the other thing we do is we run an employee centric company so it's focused around the employees. You know, we're open 8 to 4:30, Monday through Friday, you know, so they get to leave at 4:30. The text can stay late if they want to. The office is usually there till 5, 5:30. But yeah, I mean they're, they're able to do that and they don't have to work 45, 50 hours a week. We're open 40 hours a week and it, yeah, we, that's all we need.

Michael Belliveau [01:14:21]:
We don't need to be open more to get the kind of numbers that we need. And you know, they maintain all their KPIs and everything that they need to do.

Lucas [01:14:29]:
Right. And so you can just, it just does what it does and just does what it does.

Michael Belliveau [01:14:33]:
And you know, we focus on just honesty and transparency to the customer. Each car is what it is. You know, we give them, you know, an inspection and show the client, this is your car. There's not like, oh we sold two tires. We need to an air filter for their alignment for tires or whatnot. We don't. I don't have any of those things for the staff to have to meet to make them feel like they have to sell something.

Lucas [01:14:55]:
So that was something you had experienced in the past.

Michael Belliveau [01:14:58]:
Yeah, because, I mean, I worked for. I was a straight commission salesperson at a dealership where, you know, if I didn't sell anything to that client, I'm not making any money. And that's, you know, that's not the way I want it to be, you know.

Lucas [01:15:08]:
Right.

Michael Belliveau [01:15:08]:
We're not commission sales, you know, with our staff.

Lucas [01:15:11]:
Yeah. What. What's the vision from here? Where. Where are you going?

Michael Belliveau [01:15:15]:
I would like to see. I'd like to have anywhere from 20 to 30 stores within the southeastern United States, you know, within 10 years.

David [01:15:23]:
Go home crack. You didn't tell me you were going to try addict in here. Spew some kind of fever dream to us.

Michael Belliveau [01:15:32]:
Well, who knows?

David [01:15:34]:
I believe you. I think you'll do it.

Michael Belliveau [01:15:36]:
I mean, I've worked in organizations where. I've been in those meetings where there's 50, 60, 100 stores managers in there, and I've just been around that, and I feel that those organizations are not a good place to be. I talk to those guys every day, and they're all miserable.

Lucas [01:15:52]:
Do you. Do you think that you could do it different, or do you think that.

David [01:15:59]:
Once you get to that point, Once.

Lucas [01:16:00]:
You get to that point, it's not.

David [01:16:02]:
It'll turn into exactly what they're doing.

Michael Belliveau [01:16:04]:
I don't want it to turn into what they're doing because you can make money and actually have customer service. Our clients love us. I mean, we have so many positive reviews because our people take the time to care. They call them back after every repair. I mean, those are the little tiny things that corporate doesn't do, which we do. Which.

Lucas [01:16:25]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [01:16:26]:
Going to a large organization, it's. I know. It's hard to keep that.

Lucas [01:16:29]:
Yeah.

Michael Belliveau [01:16:30]:
That trend alive for sure.

Lucas [01:16:32]:
Well, like, I went from. From a little shop to a big shop, and it changed, and it became very difficult to maintain that and keep my finger on the pulse like I once did. Right. Like, it's completely different than what it was. And the more you grow, the harder that is to do. And the more you exert this energy and you spread yourself out to work here, here and here, the harder it is to accomplish. Right. And so, like, I think the key is.

Lucas [01:16:59]:
And so we talked to Doug Grylls a while back, and Doug is extraordinarily successful. And he said, look, three stores is the worst part. Like, if you can get to four or five, then you can have the revenue you need.

David [01:17:11]:
He said, five?

Lucas [01:17:12]:
Yeah.

David [01:17:12]:
I said from three to five, it's difficult. But he said at three, you're just dealing with three individual shops. You have three times headaches. At five, you have layers underneath you so you don't have to deal with the day to day.

Lucas [01:17:26]:
And so the other thing I was going to say about that exact topic is the guy who worked for Sun Auto that was at the. At a recent event in Tulsa I was at. Brilliant guy, right? And he's an employee, but, like, he is somebody who says, okay, here's how we're going to do this. He's the integrator, right? He's got people above him that say, like, here's where we want to go. And he's like, all right, I got you. I'm just going to make it happen. And so it takes those people to come in and do that. You're the visionary, but you got to have an integrator.

Lucas [01:18:00]:
You've got to have that person to take what you want to do and make it happen. And so I thought it was really interesting because Chris is kind of like that for me. I thought it was so interesting to watch this guy because, I mean, like, they don't mess with him. They just say, hey, go do your thing, right? We'll get out of your way. You do what you need to do. And he knows what has to happen. He just does what needs to be done. And so I think for somebody like me or David, that's a lot harder to accomplish because we both meddle.

Lucas [01:18:29]:
He says that I meddle, and I do. I think he's way worse than I am, but, I mean, that's just my personal opinion.

David [01:18:35]:
You're wrong. All right.