Changing The Industry Podcast

David Roman [00:00:00]:
Yeah. What's up, fam?

Kyle Buenger [00:00:05]:
What's going.

David Roman [00:00:06]:
Hey, you need these.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:08]:
You might. You might put them on just so you can hear yourself talking.

David Roman [00:00:10]:
Yeah, because, like, if you back away from that mic, even just a little bit, it's gonna, like, you're gonna fade away like you can't hear it.

Lucas [00:00:16]:
Gotcha. Is this loud enough?

David Roman [00:00:17]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:17]:
Okay.

David Roman [00:00:18]:
You'll be just fine.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:19]:
How you doing? You'll be able to hear us fine. You don't have to put the half year on. Oh, okay. Yeah, you can put it all the way on.

Lucas [00:00:25]:
That's fine. I think I'm good. I can hear both.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:27]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:00:28]:
Cool.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:28]:
Okay, cool.

David Roman [00:00:30]:
So introduce yourself, brother.

Lucas [00:00:31]:
So my name is Kyle Binger. I'm with KB Mobile programming out here in Phoenix, Arizona.

David Roman [00:00:36]:
Very nice. Very nice.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:39]:
What happened?

Lucas [00:00:41]:
Yeah, so I. I don't remember if it was 174178 for the remote service. Advising was the last time I talked to you guys.

Kyle Buenger [00:00:49]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:00:50]:
Long story short, got burnt out a little bit. The owner started stepping away a little bit more to work on the business, not in the business, which then put more responsibilities on me and Kasha. And then it just started snowballing.

David Roman [00:01:04]:
Right, Right.

Lucas [00:01:05]:
Yep. So previously to that events happening, I started doing side business as far as programming. So then that just started taking off a little bit. Little bit. Little bit. And then after we cut ties, I just started doing that full time.

David Roman [00:01:22]:
Right, gotcha. And so, like, did it end in a friendly way? Did it end in a. I'd still.

Lucas [00:01:27]:
Say I'm like, I just left the class right now. We were sitting next to each other taking classes last night for the event or the vendors? Yeah, you know, we were shooting, you know, shooting the breeze, walking around like.

Kyle Buenger [00:01:42]:
A roll with the punches kind of guy. I don't think a lot bothers him, but I don't know, I would have been like. I would have not been so, I don't know, passive about it, maybe. I don't know how to say it. I would have made sure to keep you, like, so what are we. What are we doing here?

Lucas [00:02:01]:
So again, I'm kind of familiar with the podcast now, so I would probably say some of it was on me, some was on him. I know you guys talk about, like, disgruntled, you know, technician, stuff like that. I was definitely getting disgruntled.

Kyle Buenger [00:02:13]:
I definitely see it. Like, some people are just wired that way. You know what I'm saying? I'm not. I mean, you seem like you're wired that way. Like, it's. It's going to Come to a head. And you kind of know, like, some people, I don't know any other way to say it, like, they care too much. They.

Kyle Buenger [00:02:32]:
They put too much into it. That stuff that I don't care about, they care about and they're getting upset over stuff. Like, it's like, dude, let it go. Like, that doesn't matter. Yeah. But nothing. Like, let it go. It's okay.

Kyle Buenger [00:02:46]:
And when you get those people that are. That are getting amped up about not inconsequential things, but inconsequential things to me, like, I'm not going to fix that. You see what I'm saying? Like, I don't. I'm not going to fix this. That this is bothering you. I'm not going to fix that that's bothering you. But because they're getting brought up or they're at least being discussed, whatever it happens to be like, I don't like the way this is getting checked in or why are we always, like, having a difficulty with this? Or, yeah, why are we working on this? Or how are you not charging. Brandon gets upset if we give away anything or if we tell them that go ahead and diagnose it and we'll get.

Kyle Buenger [00:03:26]:
Like, while you, while you're diagnosing, we're going to call and get authorization. Now, obviously, if they don't authorize, then we end up eating it.

David Roman [00:03:32]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:03:32]:
The only reason why we're telling them to do that is because we've. We are. We are 100% sure that, that they're going to buy it.

David Roman [00:03:38]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:03:40]:
And normally, because we've had that conversation with the customer upfront that, hey, this is going to be something here. And just to save some time, just so we don't have to, like, go back and forth, pull the car out, pull it back in or whatever, just roll right into the diag. Dude, we'll. We'll take care of it. Yeah, but. Yeah, but, yeah, but nothing. Don't worry about it. Just go back.

Kyle Buenger [00:03:55]:
Right. And. But sometimes those. Yeah. Butts turn into. They start to build up. Yeah. And then they start to bother you, and then everything starts to bother you, and then you get upset and stuff like that.

David Roman [00:04:08]:
You should.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:08]:
I mean, most people, I. At least you see it coming.

David Roman [00:04:12]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:13]:
That's for sure.

Lucas [00:04:13]:
Yeah. Months.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying is like, okay, so this is. And maybe he was like, okay, well, I can. I'll be okay if he, if he leaves, when he decides to leave, because this is going to come to A head. Maybe he got to that point. But if.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:31]:
If, if the guys, we just had a conversation with Cody Gadda here, and.

Lucas [00:04:35]:
He'S like, love Cody.

David Roman [00:04:36]:
Yeah. Awesome dude.

Lucas [00:04:37]:
Super smart. Oh, my gosh. So actually, funny story about Cody. I actually went to high school with his wife.

David Roman [00:04:42]:
Really? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's nice.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:46]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:04:47]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:04:48]:
So he's saying that, like, in the Tucson market, he can't. He can't find anybody that is interested in what he's doing. So he goes to all these shops and not a one technician is going, hey, what are you doing? Hey. What? Why? Like, how did you learn how to do that? I'm interested in. Can you point some classes to me? What YouTube channel show have you watched? Nothing. Like, nothing. They. They're all hands off, don't care, no interest in it.

Kyle Buenger [00:05:14]:
They don't care. And so. Which is just mind blowing to me. Just absolutely mind blowing to me. So if. If that's the condition in Tucson, you have to imagine that's probably true of the area as a whole. Arizona as a whole. Right.

Kyle Buenger [00:05:32]:
This place should be packed with a thousand people. It isn't, right? The conference. Why? Because nobody knows. Yeah.

Lucas [00:05:41]:
I'm like, I've been in this field since 2002. I didn't even know about this until last year.

David Roman [00:05:46]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:05:46]:
Well, you can thank the podcast for that. But I'm saying, like, there are. There are at least. You do run into technicians that are. At least they're pursuing. They're like, hey, I just want to kind of know. Or like, they're trying to better themselves. And if the whole of Arizona doesn't know about swap, right.

Kyle Buenger [00:06:05]:
Then they're at least in a. In a particular situation where I'm not going to be able to find a replacement guy that can diag. That can do programming, that can do board repair. Like, I'm not. They're not a dime a dozen. So I got to figure something out here. Either I can let that service go and then just buy it as needed, or I got to keep this guy on, and then you just. You figure something out.

Kyle Buenger [00:06:31]:
Like, let's figure out a solution to this here. Is it more time off? Is it just shorter days? Is it. Do you need help? Do you need another person? Like, let's figure something.

David Roman [00:06:41]:
What was it? What was the.

Lucas [00:06:43]:
So long story short? Yeah, it was this thing right here that killed the relationship.

David Roman [00:06:49]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:06:50]:
I got a hold of Isaac in October. We were programming laptops. I was figuring out my thing that was slowing me down was the laptop trying to get everything downloaded, stuff like that. So I got a hold of Isaac, got a professional laptop from him, got it in, wasn't fully set up because he was rushing to get to SEMA and Apex.

David Roman [00:07:08]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:07:09]:
So after.

Kyle Buenger [00:07:09]:
He's always rushing, by the way. It's like 24 7.

Lucas [00:07:12]:
Well, busy man.

David Roman [00:07:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think some of it may be fabricated.

Lucas [00:07:18]:
So got the laptop and was finally working on getting the Otis system downloaded. Yeah, completely. I couldn't figure it out. So contacted him. He said the only time he had available was during the week. Well, again, I'm working during the week. So I brought the laptop with me, hooked up to the Internet, and then logged in before work hours. And then maybe half an hour later, I noticed he logged in and he's doing his thing.

Lucas [00:07:40]:
Not even touching the laptop, just sitting on top of my toolbox, doing my thing.

David Roman [00:07:43]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:07:44]:
And my boss came in, saw it, knew what the laptop was, and said that he didn't want me working on that during business hours, even though technically I'm not working on it.

David Roman [00:07:55]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:07:55]:
And was this. Was this like. Did you tell him, hey, I'm going to start the side hustle where I do mobile programming, so can we circle back also?

Lucas [00:08:04]:
Go back to that? So whatever. So he saw the laptop, we got into an argument, and it boiled down to he got. Was upset because I was using his WI fi. I was like, okay, whatever. So turned the hotspot on the phone, left the phone there. Problem is that Kasha is always calling me 30 times a day on the cell phone. So now I can't answer the cell phone. I can't do my inspections because I don't have anything besides my cell phone.

Lucas [00:08:24]:
So then my productivity.

Kyle Buenger [00:08:25]:
Personal cell phone.

Lucas [00:08:26]:
Personal cell phone, productivity robbed. And then we had a conversation about that, and I said, okay, well, either give me a tablet or a phone or something like that. So we went down to the store, had an old phone. I guess they couldn't hook it up. It was too old. I don't know.

Kyle Buenger [00:08:38]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:08:39]:
And then just told me and the other guy just share the. Share the tablet. And then obviously.

Kyle Buenger [00:08:46]:
Yeah, then that snowballed.

Lucas [00:08:47]:
So.

Kyle Buenger [00:08:48]:
Yeah, but, you know, that. That probably was the tipping point. But, you know, it was building. Well.

David Roman [00:08:53]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:08:53]:
What.

David Roman [00:08:54]:
Was there anything before that? That was kind of started because, I mean, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that that would be the one thing that would set it off to that level, you know, So I.

Lucas [00:09:04]:
Noticed when I first started working there that it was almost impossible to get a programmer out there. It Would take two, three weeks to get out there. Just impossible. So I've got a little bit of programming background from other companies I worked at. So I started looking for BCIs. I had an MDI, but I wasn't confident using that for, like, the Toyotas is what we were getting calls for. So eventually I ended up buying my own VCI out of my own money, took my own personal time with my personal laptop, set it up on the side using my wife's car, verify that it would work, would do it. And then I came up to him, presented, hey, we've got a problem.

Lucas [00:09:40]:
Here's my solution. The only problem is, is that when you start selling this, I would like a profit out of that to pay for the equipment off. Once the equipment is paid off, you can have 100%, whatever, don't care. But I would like to get reimbursed over time for the equipment that I have now purchased out of my pocket to help your business. He said, absolutely not. You're going to program for me whenever I want for free.

David Roman [00:10:03]:
Did you communicate before you bought it and say, okay?

Lucas [00:10:06]:
So I was.

Kyle Buenger [00:10:06]:
So I. I will step back. I wanted to defend him a little bit. It's a little bit on you.

Lucas [00:10:10]:
Yes.

Kyle Buenger [00:10:11]:
What you should have said is, here's this piece of equipment, I need you to buy it.

Lucas [00:10:15]:
So when I first came on, he laid down the whole plan. There was zero money for that. I, I don't want to spoil his future plans, but he's got plans for bigger stuff that he needs the money for, bigger opportunity. So $1,500 for VCI, stuff like that, it just wasn't in the platform and again, whatever. So he didn't want the program. Okay, that's fine. So we talked about it for a couple hours. A couple days later, came back to him and said, okay, final opportunity.

Lucas [00:10:46]:
You've had a couple days to think about it. You want to do it or not? Because if you're not going to do it, I'm going to start doing it on the side. Already bought the equipment, I gotta set it up, I gotta make the money back.

David Roman [00:10:54]:
Yeah, yeah.

Lucas [00:10:55]:
So he said he was out. So then I called a couple of my friends that ran shops and then I started doing that. I called my beta testing, figuring out, you know, what equipment I'm missing, stuff like that.

Kyle Buenger [00:11:04]:
So you kind of knew.

Lucas [00:11:06]:
So that was, I guess, the start. Yeah. And I think that was in May.

David Roman [00:11:12]:
And so he started getting a little frustrated because he felt like you were putting more focus on your thing.

Kyle Buenger [00:11:18]:
Well, as soon as, as soon as he said, I'm gonna start doing my.

David Roman [00:11:20]:
Own thing, that to him, says in.

Kyle Buenger [00:11:23]:
His mind, he's like, okay, this guy's quit. It's like, yeah, this is done. That would. Whether. Whether he. Maybe he thought of it consciously, maybe he didn't, but, you know, yeah, his.

David Roman [00:11:34]:
Decision making started falling in line with that.

Kyle Buenger [00:11:36]:
Yeah. Deep down he's like, we're done. And, and not, not. Not that he would have acted any differently with you or anything like that. It just, it was a disconnecting. It's like, this person's no longer my future plans. Like, five years from now, this person's not gonna be here. And so you start acting differently in those situations.

Kyle Buenger [00:11:56]:
And I mean, honestly, I mean, it happens when you start to see an employee start acting even. Even not in your particular situation. But I've had employees that you're just like, yeah, this person is not the right fit. And so you cut them out of whatever your game plan is for the next year, two years, five years down the road.

David Roman [00:12:14]:
And so then it just naturally kind of happens.

Kyle Buenger [00:12:16]:
Yeah. You start treating because it's like, what are you gonna do, quit? Save me from having to fire you? Yeah, it's like, I don't know. Yeah. That sucks, man. That's unfortunate.

David Roman [00:12:29]:
So where are we now?

Kyle Buenger [00:12:30]:
What.

David Roman [00:12:31]:
What's happening now?

Lucas [00:12:32]:
So business is going great. I brought my P and Ls if you guys are interested. And I don't know how you guys feel about that, but.

David Roman [00:12:39]:
Yeah, for sure.

Lucas [00:12:39]:
Yeah. No, just, you know, started off in, I think it was like, second week before Christmas when I went out on my own.

David Roman [00:12:45]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:12:45]:
Spent the first three weeks passing cards out. Hit about 500 shops in the first three weeks.

Kyle Buenger [00:12:49]:
Cards out, man, that's good.

Lucas [00:12:52]:
Thank you. And then finally, at the beginning of January, I just started getting calls and getting calls. And then I found three used car dealers and they don't have any diagnosticians. Well, so. Yeah, I know.

Kyle Buenger [00:13:03]:
So they only have mechanics either.

Lucas [00:13:05]:
No, no, they don't. So I started doing diag working for them. And, you know, it just boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, you know, I check in with Isaac every couple months. Hey, man, I need some more equipment. What do you think? Trying to go this way. And then, you know, he says, I'm do this and give me a credit card and just keep going.

David Roman [00:13:23]:
How'd you develop your charging strategy? Like, when you set your business financials up, how did you decide what you were going to charge and how you were going to do that?

Lucas [00:13:30]:
So. So for as far as the business side, I used to have a shop back in 2016, 2017. So when that ended, I just left everything open.

Kyle Buenger [00:13:39]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:13:39]:
I just didn't use it. So when I went to this, it was very easy. All I just did what dba piggyback everything off the original business. I was good to go. So it cost me, really, 20 bucks just to start it back up.

Kyle Buenger [00:13:51]:
Yeah, but as far as like setting your pricing.

Lucas [00:13:54]:
So the pricing when I originally started was I was trying to base it kind of off of like what dealership pricing is. So, like for the domestics, everybody knows that. Yeah. So. Well, that and then Isaac also gave me some pointers. He said, well, out here and where I'm at, this is what I charge. Okay.

Kyle Buenger [00:14:10]:
So did you reach out to Cody?

Lucas [00:14:12]:
I had his card, but I don't know Cody that well and you know, like, he's busy man. I don't want to burden him with my problems.

David Roman [00:14:19]:
Yeah, so reach out.

Kyle Buenger [00:14:21]:
Doesn't stop anyone for sending Yahoo over here a message. And he responds to everybody because he's like that. So all day long, randos just bling.

David Roman [00:14:29]:
Bling, bling, bling, bling.

Kyle Buenger [00:14:31]:
Yeah, all day long just replying to all of them. And voice messages too.

David Roman [00:14:36]:
Those poor people hearing my hick talk in their ears all the time.

Kyle Buenger [00:14:41]:
Listen, I had to say hick in front of poor. What's his name? Jordan. Yeah, because. Because of what he said. I had to say hick in particular because it was absurd. I'm just. I was trying to show the absurdity of his logic that they're all the same. Dude, you make a distinction between low and high country, but somehow this is all the same.

Kyle Buenger [00:15:06]:
Get out of here.

David Roman [00:15:08]:
Listen, honey, he's a. He's a simple minded country boy. He don't. He don't think that far into things.

Kyle Buenger [00:15:15]:
I can tell. Poor Jordan.

David Roman [00:15:18]:
So mean.

Kyle Buenger [00:15:19]:
Anyway, hey, I'm just going to give you a tip here. This business rule, do not let your employees date each other. Bad idea.

Lucas [00:15:27]:
Okay, so. So me and the wife that does the bookkeeping. Yeah, not a good idea.

David Roman [00:15:32]:
Yeah, yeah, I was a date.

Kyle Buenger [00:15:34]:
Not married. Like, that's different.

Lucas [00:15:36]:
What about if we set like office hours between 8 and 5?

David Roman [00:15:39]:
Yeah. No touching.

Kyle Buenger [00:15:40]:
Yeah. If you're the owner and your wife works in the business, perfectly fine. If, however, you're not the owner, you're just an employee, you start dating somebody else in the business, one of you two's gotta go. Doesn't matter who.

David Roman [00:15:54]:
Did y' all see?

Kyle Buenger [00:15:55]:
Gotta go.

David Roman [00:15:56]:
Did y' all see that post the other day where a shop owner comments that the advisor who is married and the tech who is married end up starting a relationship, and they're like, hey, how am I gonna solve this? Because these are.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:10]:
Fired. Em.

Lucas [00:16:11]:
Both.

David Roman [00:16:11]:
Well, these are my two only employees.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:13]:
Yeah, but I was. I would have fired them both. I would have fired them both. I'm just saying, like, the. The type. Are you a cheater?

Lucas [00:16:20]:
No.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:20]:
Okay, so the type of person that is.

David Roman [00:16:22]:
He doesn't want to offend you.

Lucas [00:16:24]:
You know, I didn't want to offend.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:24]:
You because you're right in front of me, but I'm just going to offend everybody who's listening.

David Roman [00:16:29]:
If you're.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:29]:
If you're the type of person that is willing to cheat on your spouse. You took vows. If you're willing to cheat on your spouse, I don't want you in the business. I don't want you in the business.

David Roman [00:16:39]:
If they're going to lie about that, they'll lie about something else.

Kyle Buenger [00:16:42]:
Well, yeah, I mean, they're living a lie. They're living an entire lie. Going home to their wife or their husband while sleeping with somebody else, having an extramarital affair. There could be an open marriage. Yeah, I guess.

Lucas [00:16:57]:
How about now?

Kyle Buenger [00:16:58]:
If somebody walked up to me and.

Lucas [00:16:59]:
Said, it's an open marriage, hypothetical. You go spend, let's say, the $25,000 and get married, but never fill out the paperwork.

Kyle Buenger [00:17:11]:
Yeah. No, it.

David Roman [00:17:12]:
I don't care about the civil union at that point.

Kyle Buenger [00:17:15]:
I don't care so much about the paperwork. If you are. If you stand in front of your friends and family and before God Almighty say, till death do us part, until someone hotter or somebody more attractive comes along, and then I'm going to bang that person. You didn't say that part right. You said, until death do us part, and that's it.

Lucas [00:17:37]:
Unless you're Jeff Bezos is what we're talking about.

David Roman [00:17:39]:
Well, no, hey, hey, listen. We've already had this conversation. It's like trading in a Honda Accord for a Ferrari.

Kyle Buenger [00:17:45]:
Bezos not sign the paperwork?

Lucas [00:17:47]:
I don't know about the paperwork, but he just. He traded in for the newer model.

Kyle Buenger [00:17:50]:
I don't think it was newer. No, I think it was something. Just had a lot of plastic bits put in. That was it. No, no, no, no, no. That's a. The Bezos situation was an entirely. Like, the woman took control of that situation.

Kyle Buenger [00:18:09]:
She wanted Jeff Bezos. She's like, hey, you're going to divorce your wife. You're going to marry me, and he went, okay. And then that was it. That was not Jeff Bezos. Just going around now. Elon. Yeah, he'll dip his ink, his pen into any ink.

Kyle Buenger [00:18:25]:
He doesn't care. He babies them up too. Just left and right. Rain dose. Rain. Dos. Anyway, I'm just saying, if you're going to have an extramarital affair, you're that kind of person. I don't want you in the business.

Kyle Buenger [00:18:38]:
Fire them both. Whoever it is that was commenting on that, this is how you fix it. Fire them both. They gotta go. Both of them don't care.

David Roman [00:18:45]:
I'm just impressed that you didn't go down and take the bait for the Honda Accord and Ferrari discussion. I saved that whole rant. I have it somewhere on the cord. Yeah, remember the. You said the 94 Accord was reliable and you could depend on it and you knew that it was going to be good, but instead you're effing idiot and you go trade it in for a Ferrari and you destroy everything.

Kyle Buenger [00:19:11]:
I have yet to see anybody go for the Ferrari. It's not even that. It's just like, It's a like 2 year old newer or 2 year newer Honda with a spoiler lip. Like, that's it. Like, ugh. What?

Lucas [00:19:28]:
This is coming from the guy with the minivan, right?

David Roman [00:19:29]:
Yeah, yeah, with the smack. I'm just saying, with the blown tranny. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe it's a tranny thing.

Kyle Buenger [00:19:36]:
I don't know. Yeah, the front pump blew out on my minivan.

Lucas [00:19:40]:
Hey, but you know what? I know tech.

David Roman [00:19:41]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:19:43]:
I know a shop too. Guess where it's sitting at?

David Roman [00:19:46]:
Transmission fluid pouring out of it.

Kyle Buenger [00:19:48]:
No, no, it was just the front pump went out. Yeah, yeah. This is what I'm driving right now. The little Pepe Toyota Yaris. Love the crap out of the car. It is a great car. I just need a little button. I hate that I have to put a key in it to unlock it and lock it.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:05]:
I don't like that. Yeah, that sucks. But if I had the button, 10 out of 10 car, Toyota Yaris. It's awesome.

David Roman [00:20:11]:
Toyotas are good cars.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:13]:
That car is a great car. You know, I've been driving, I think I've got 150 miles on it and I think it's used an eighth of a tank.

David Roman [00:20:21]:
Wow.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:22]:
It's so ridiculous.

David Roman [00:20:23]:
That's awesome.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:24]:
I'm used to like 17 miles of a gallon. This thing's getting like 40. That is crazy.

David Roman [00:20:29]:
That's pretty cool. So in all seriousness, how did you set your pricing when you, you know, you talk a little bit about. You got some advice from Isaac and other stuff. But I mean, I changed it.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:39]:
That's really what it.

Lucas [00:20:40]:
So after the training classes from yesterday and talking to people, I am way underpriced. Underpriced.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:46]:
Yeah, everybody ever.

Lucas [00:20:48]:
Yeah, so. But yeah, so I am. Yeah, starting next month, I'm definitely going to be up and up in at least my, my by next month testing.

Kyle Buenger [00:20:56]:
Let's do it tomorrow.

Lucas [00:20:57]:
I. I gotta go through the, the QuickBooks and, and change that stuff. And then I'm gonna notify the clients that my big clients.

David Roman [00:21:04]:
I wouldn't say it works.

Kyle Buenger [00:21:05]:
I wouldn't say anything.

David Roman [00:21:05]:
No, no, just change your go in.

Kyle Buenger [00:21:07]:
There tomorrow and change a big deal about it. Okay? Be like, hey, it's 275 now. And be like, oh, what happened to 200? So, yeah, cost of doing business, man. Here's what you always say, yeah, con me, man. And they go, yeah, yeah, you're right. I get you. That's all you say the economy, that you don't have to say bad or good. It's tough out there.

Kyle Buenger [00:21:26]:
You don't say anything. Just say the economy. And they go, yeah, yeah, you're right. Because they don't know what else to say to that. Like, what are they going to be like? No, this economy is great. Everybody's making a ton of money and like, inflation is down. No, no, they're not going to argue with you. Just say the economy and they'll 100% be like, yeah, that sucks, man.

Kyle Buenger [00:21:42]:
Okay, 275. That's it.

David Roman [00:21:44]:
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:21:44]:
And Monday, it's either that or like three weeks they have to wait for some other rando to show up.

David Roman [00:21:50]:
And, and here's the other thing about that, is that, you know, in a shop we have parts that subsidize the profit. And so you don't have that. And so you have to think about, okay, if a repair shop, brick and mortar repair shop needs 60% gross profit, and they have a 1.85 ratio on parts and labor. In other words, for every dollar of labor you sell, you sell 0.85 in parts, and those parts are 60%, 55% gross profit. That means that if you're not selling parts to your. You're missing half of the gross profit equation. Now you're mobile, so you don't have the rent, overhead and those things, but it's not that substantial. So you've got to be figuring out like, hey, where's my money? On the back end of that and so gross profit per hour is going to be huge.

David Roman [00:22:36]:
If you got your P and Ls, we can look at them and just see.

Kyle Buenger [00:22:50]:
Take a binder and everything.

Lucas [00:22:52]:
I am so ocd, it's crazy. So on the left is my monthly expenses, Okay, I think what kind of.

Kyle Buenger [00:23:05]:
Points are you getting out of that chasing card?

Lucas [00:23:07]:
So here's the problem. You'd be surprised. Subscription cost for OEMs, zero.

Kyle Buenger [00:23:12]:
What do you mean?

Lucas [00:23:13]:
I don't get nothing on that. Tools, I get, I think 3% or something like that. Gas, I get 2%. But subscriptions, paying the manufacturers for the rights to. I get nothing.

Kyle Buenger [00:23:25]:
Really.

Lucas [00:23:27]:
Chase Business, Inc. Well, I know you're always talking about Capital One, but I love Capital One.

Kyle Buenger [00:23:33]:
Here's the best part about Capital One. Like, so I, I run it up to the limit. Now I have a low limit, right? But whenever I need money on the card, it just helps me control the expenses. So somebody tries to hit the card, there's no money on the card. It just gets declined. What do I care, right? When it's time to pay them, I just put money on the card and then it opens up credit because it's instant. Like, you pay and bloop. Money's on the card.

Kyle Buenger [00:23:55]:
And so I have then. And because I funnel all my expenses to the card, like one, I'm getting 2% on every purchase, right? Which is given to me in travel points. Now, the reason why you want travel points is because not taxable, okay? If you do cash back, that is tax income. So you have to report it, okay? You don't have to report travel points and travel points. And then you can use it to, to buy stuff or whatever, redeem it for whatever you want. But you want the points, the travel points, right? And then. So I like it for that reason is that I get immediate credit on my card. I get the travel points.

Kyle Buenger [00:24:34]:
You can make up to four payments on the account. You can overpay. So if your limit's 2,000, you can pay, I think, up to $2,200 at a time to pay the whole card off, plus an extra 10% to get a little extra credit on there. They give you some flexibility, too. You can click a button and they'll say, well, we're going to give you a $2,000 credit limit, but we're only going to give you $3,000 of purchasing power. Because if you do go over, we're not going to decline you if you're over by $250. We're just going to Let it roll. But they have a cap to that so you don't just go nuts.

Kyle Buenger [00:25:06]:
You see what I'm saying?

Lucas [00:25:06]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:25:08]:
There's all sorts of crazy options you can have with. With capital when they're. They make it super flexible. That's why I like it. And they're in their travel on the back end. The travel stuff legit. Everything but Southwest is on there. So when I fly American, that's what I use the book.

Kyle Buenger [00:25:26]:
And hell, I flew first class. It was the same price as main cabin.

David Roman [00:25:30]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:25:31]:
With the. Once I checked my bags, it was cheaper for me to fly first class because I had free bags. I never flown first class. It was nice. You fly first class. It's fantastic. This is all he flies now I can see why. Super bougie old people sitting around me, because that's all who can afford first class is old people older than me, is what I'm saying.

Kyle Buenger [00:25:52]:
Older than me. Like. Like white hair, older people.

Lucas [00:25:54]:
Yeah. So what I'm trying to do now is save the points because I'm trying to go to Apex this year.

David Roman [00:25:59]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:25:59]:
And know I'm not, you know, I can't, like just drive home afterwards now. So now I'm going to have to do the whole hotel and all that stuff and.

David Roman [00:26:06]:
Yeah. That's way to do it.

Kyle Buenger [00:26:07]:
Yeah. So I. The, the capital one card's great. You just book a hotel with the capital one card. Okay. From your points, where all your purchases.

David Roman [00:26:15]:
Where'S your labor, where's your cost?

Lucas [00:26:18]:
So I'm 150 an hour as of right now.

David Roman [00:26:21]:
And so I'm saying, where, where is.

Kyle Buenger [00:26:23]:
Your pay, your paycheck?

Lucas [00:26:25]:
Oh, it's a sole propriety. So I just take money whenever I want.

David Roman [00:26:35]:
Right. But that doesn't work. That won't work. That's not okay.

Kyle Buenger [00:26:39]:
Well, it's. It's okay. But you have to. Whatever you pull has to then be reported as income. And then you have to estimate your tax and you have to save it. And then you. You're not saving. You have to send it in quarterly.

Lucas [00:26:53]:
Yeah. No, and I. Yeah, I just paid that, what, two weeks ago for the first six months.

David Roman [00:26:58]:
I would rather just pay the payroll tax. And that way I'm reporting and because, like, they're gonna. If he were to try and sell this, which I wouldn't think he's gonna try and sell it, but that's one component of it is the owner being paid. Second of all, it helps with financing. Right. Because now the owner's being paid, and it's not In a draw in that.

Kyle Buenger [00:27:19]:
Yeah, that's the bigger factor. It's not necessarily looking at it like I'm going to sell it is if you do need to apply for, need to apply for credit anywhere for anything you need to, you need to buy anything. The first thing, where's your income? You don't have any reported income at this point.

David Roman [00:27:38]:
Right. And yeah, the business is not making enough money because like if they, if they go back and they pull that from the draws then they put it in here, you're upside down most months. Right. Like if you were taking an actual paycheck.

Kyle Buenger [00:27:50]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:27:51]:
Like you're not going to be making any money.

Kyle Buenger [00:27:53]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:27:53]:
And so you're, then you're going to.

Kyle Buenger [00:27:55]:
Be like just this month here. I mean they're going to ask you like what's your mortgage or what's your rent? Like how much you're buying for food, what's your carpet like? They're going to ask you a bunch of questions. You're gonna be like, well that's not enough. And yeah, this sort of subsidizing the income or whatever, like whatever your the solution is. But if you've got at least steady income because you show you yourself as a W2 employee one, it helps you set your pricing because you're going to add a whole bunch of expenses in there. You got to pay for Social Security tax, Medicare, Medicaid, whatever, whatever, whatever.

David Roman [00:28:31]:
It also means when you go to hire somebody, you're already prepared for that.

Kyle Buenger [00:28:34]:
And you know what you already know if that's hey, it's time to hire because the bottom is matching my salary, meaning I can hire somebody for what I'm paying myself now and I'm still going to be able to keep my salary. See what I'm saying? Yeah.

Lucas [00:28:47]:
No, I've talked to my CPA about going rolling over to an S corp, but he says until I start hitting a certain net, it's not worth offset.

David Roman [00:28:55]:
I wouldn't, I would not take business advice from a CPA in that way. I would be paying myself.

Kyle Buenger [00:29:01]:
Right.

David Roman [00:29:01]:
I wouldn't need to be paying yourself.

Kyle Buenger [00:29:04]:
You're just saving the self the hassle on the back end and. But if you're already in QuickBooks, just set up QuickBooks Payroll and just run, run the QuickBooks Payroll.

Lucas [00:29:14]:
That's the problem. The QuickBooks version I use is on Mac and it's not online. No, I don't do the online.

Kyle Buenger [00:29:20]:
No, I forgot to switch it online every. The QuickBooks is going to online only.

Lucas [00:29:25]:
Yeah, I heard their 2024 is going to be their last actual disc.

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

Kyle Buenger [00:29:29]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:29:29]:
Version.

Kyle Buenger [00:29:30]:
So they've gotten rid of it. Like, so you got to move on. Like, just if you go to QuickBooks online, it'll dump everything over. It'll be seamless for you. I mean, there's some nuances, I'm not gonna lie. There's. There's a whole lot of stuff that people that use the desktop version of QuickBooks don't like about online. I started online and it sucked to start with.

Kyle Buenger [00:29:48]:
It's so much better now. There's so many, like, different functionality options, but it'll calculate your payroll taxes for you. It'll calculate your payroll however you want to pay yourself, hourly, whatever. Right. Salary. And it will help you. It will pay. It'll send the money to the IRS for you.

Kyle Buenger [00:30:08]:
It'll send your state money for you. Also local taxes. It'll separate it all out for you. You've got a nice sheet, you can report it. You've got now W2, like W2 income, even within your business. And then if you end up with anything on the bottom, you end up with something on the bottom. You can pull it out at least with an S Corp, whatever you pull out from the bottom, let's say you end up with a couple grand at the bottom and you want to pull that for yourself, that you should. You can do a whole bunch of different things with it.

Kyle Buenger [00:30:36]:
Just keep it in retained. But at the end of the year, if you've got like, hey, I've got this 10 grand, like, you can dump it into a whole bunch of different things. But all I'm saying is you at least have this trackable W2 income that you can then use if you do need to apply for credit or whatever, you've got that there and the taxes don't get like, squirrely and you don't end up with a dawn tax bill at the end of the year.

David Roman [00:30:58]:
Right. Because that can definitely.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:00]:
Yeah. QuickBooks has pulled it out all year round.

David Roman [00:31:02]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:03]:
You don't have to worry about it.

David Roman [00:31:04]:
And here's the other thing is, is what you're doing is you're hiding the fact the business is not making money in the balance sheet. Right.

Lucas [00:31:11]:
Yeah. Because like you said, you're not paying yourself.

David Roman [00:31:13]:
Right, Exactly. And so if you're not going to make any money, like, you could go get a job and work for somebody and make more money. Now when you raise your prices, that's going to help. But based on what I see in that, you're going to have to Pretty substantially raise your prices.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:27]:
Right.

David Roman [00:31:27]:
Because you just. There's no money there.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:29]:
Right. And so here's the biggest thing you have to keep in mind is you, you all have. And this is just like when you were in a shop, you only have so much time in a day.

David Roman [00:31:37]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:37]:
So you have those eight hours to sell.

David Roman [00:31:40]:
Yep.

Kyle Buenger [00:31:40]:
So you have to keep that in mind. Like here are all my expenses, plus I want to make 100,000, so tack that on there. Plus I need to add another 35% for taxes. So it's $135,000 on top of all my expenses. Right. So divided by eight hours, how much per hour minus travel time. But I have to take that into account. Right.

Kyle Buenger [00:32:02]:
So I'm going to be working six hours out of this eight hour day. Those six hours, how much am I.

David Roman [00:32:10]:
Able to charge the bills account for.

Kyle Buenger [00:32:11]:
The whole eight hours? See what I'm saying? So now you have your total dollar amount that you can then charge per hour. And then that's just your price. And if you're like, you're going to calculate, I'm just telling you, no, it's going to be quadruple what you're charging right now. And you're going to be like, I can't charge that. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

David Roman [00:32:26]:
And at the end of the day, yourself.

Kyle Buenger [00:32:28]:
They were waiting two to three weeks. They're going to keep waiting for two to now. You might lose a customer or two, but guess what, you're going to lose half your customers. That's how it always is. You're going to lose half your customers. You weren't making any money with them anyway. The half that you do keep because you're charging quadruple, you lost half. Charging four times.

Kyle Buenger [00:32:45]:
You'll still be ahead. Does that make sense? Yep. You'll be doing less work.

David Roman [00:32:48]:
Yeah, well, and you'll be doing less work, but you'll also be in a situation where, like we hear that so often at this point that, oh, they'll all leave. I won't have anything to do. Well, you're not making money anyway, so what's the point? Right? Like you're not actually progressing yourself. You're not taking yourself and moving yourself forward. You don't have a business you can sell. You don't have a business that's worth anything. And I don't mean that to be disparaging. That's not what I'm saying at all.

David Roman [00:33:13]:
I'm saying that because of those factors, like you don't have anything right now. So you don't really have anything to lose. So if you raise the prices and they all did walk out, you could go get a job and reformulate, figure.

Kyle Buenger [00:33:28]:
Out how to do it. Another 500 shops. Yeah, just go hit another 500 shops. You're going to pick up a few customers. Pricing.

David Roman [00:33:35]:
I am a little worried about insurance expense. That insurance seems really low. Yeah, 200 to 300amonth. That's like super low for what you're doing.

Kyle Buenger [00:33:43]:
That's not bad.

Lucas [00:33:45]:
Actually I have my, my insurance with me too if you want to look.

Kyle Buenger [00:33:49]:
Yeah, I only pay 600. Dude, I have the exact same insurance. You do like blow for blow all the way down. I even added the like social media stuff.

David Roman [00:34:02]:
When you call, do they say when you called it that he does Mickey Mouse answer the phone.

Kyle Buenger [00:34:09]:
Pajit answers the phone. Okay.

David Roman [00:34:14]:
Okay. So each occurrence, 500,000 damage to rented premises, medical expenses, 5,000 personal. That's too low.

Kyle Buenger [00:34:25]:
Yeah, $5,000 medical expense for any one.

David Roman [00:34:27]:
Yeah, dude, that's, that's, that is way lower than what it's like a scratch. Yeah, yeah, dude, that's if you lose a finger.

Kyle Buenger [00:34:34]:
If somebody loses a finger.

David Roman [00:34:36]:
Well, and you've got, you've got. It's per occurrence.

Kyle Buenger [00:34:42]:
Is there a total, like total liability?

David Roman [00:34:48]:
Well, it says each occurrence. I don't say aggregate limit. I'm guessing right here. Yeah, aggregate. It's a million. I mean you think. And what all does. See, this is not enough for us to know.

David Roman [00:35:02]:
Within garage keepers there's a number of exclusions and there's a number of riders that you add. So there's cyber, there's inland marine. That covers your tools and things like that.

Lucas [00:35:15]:
I know the tools is 40,000. I do know that. The other thing too is on this policy too, because it's only testing and programming. This does not cover any engine repairs or any engine damage or anything like that.

Kyle Buenger [00:35:27]:
So you're not doing any of that, right?

Lucas [00:35:28]:
I'm not doing any of that. I'm not doing any type of repair.

Kyle Buenger [00:35:31]:
The problem though is you hit the wrong button, it breaks four modules. Yep. They're 1500 modules. 1500 dollars each. Yeah. Now you've got a 6 or 7000 dollar.

Lucas [00:35:41]:
Yeah, they're out of my pocket. Or.

Kyle Buenger [00:35:43]:
Yeah, yeah. Well that's what you would want the insurance to cover. Like, hey, I screwed up here. This is on me. That's what I got you guys for. What's, what's the.

David Roman [00:35:55]:
And this is just general liability, which I would talk to somebody who knows garagekeepers insurance.

Kyle Buenger [00:36:02]:
I'm Texting my insurance guy.

David Roman [00:36:04]:
Yeah, this, to me, looks pretty freaking low. It does not look like very good coverage. Now, obviously we can't see the. We can't see the, like, the riders that they would have added on, but there are a lot of, like, riders and other things that you add and take away to make sure you have adequate coverage. Like, dude, when they give me my.

Lucas [00:36:23]:
Insurance, it's like that, 12, 15 pages long.

David Roman [00:36:26]:
Okay, yeah, I'll.

Kyle Buenger [00:36:30]:
I'll. I'll reach out to my insurance guy. I just sent him a message. And if he. If he can do Arizona, which I think he can, I'm pretty sure he's almost every state. There's like a few, like, weird states like Massachusetts and stuff like that he doesn't mess with. But if you can do Arizona, I'll. I'll have him.

Kyle Buenger [00:36:46]:
I'll have you send him the stuff. He'll do a review and he'll be like, yeah, you're a little uninsured here. Or like, hey, I would add this in. Or he asks a thousand questions. He's really good.

Lucas [00:36:57]:
Yeah. So the biggest problem I found is that most insurance companies, they want to insure a building, not a mobile. Well, so that was my problem, was finding a company that would do.

Kyle Buenger [00:37:07]:
Yeah, mobile. That's why you have to, like. So he's a broker, and so he, he has like 100 insurance companies that he deals with. So he always had. Dude, he does like, you know, the. The $25,000 if you get a hole in one at a golf tournament thing. They have insurance for that. He, he sells that kind of insurance.

Kyle Buenger [00:37:25]:
Like, he. He'll insure anything. He has insurance for, like, weird situations, weird cars, too. If you've got like a classic car or whatever and like that you never drive but sits into in a museum. He's like, yeah, I can get you insurance for that specialty insurance for that car, for that situation. Antique or one off, special edition, whatever. Yeah, so don't worry about that.

David Roman [00:37:48]:
I thought it was interesting, the family business. David Corey came up and he reviewed that for us. And he said, you know that I can't remember the name of the company, but he said, that's the first insurance company to ever exist as whoever's insuring that business. And he said it's because there's nobody else that'll cover those things. He's like, they are the only ones who will cover it. He's like, you have no options. He's like, that's who you're going to have to talk to for Insurance for what? For instance, they have a bull rod, like a inflatable bull ride. Very few people cover that.

David Roman [00:38:22]:
The antiques. Very, very few people will cover that. And so they specialize in those things. So it's pretty interesting. Out of London.

Kyle Buenger [00:38:33]:
You need to start an insurance company as a competitor to that. Like, hey, I insure bull rides.

David Roman [00:38:38]:
Let me get a couple. Let me get a couple billion from you, and I'll call Dutch. So, you know, it looks like there's some. Some financials that need some work, and I. I think that you need to be really careful right now. Right. I know you might.

Kyle Buenger [00:38:54]:
No, you'll be fine.

David Roman [00:38:55]:
Yeah. No, I'm just saying keep your prices up.

Kyle Buenger [00:38:57]:
You'll be fine.

David Roman [00:38:58]:
Yeah, but you need to be careful and navigate that so you're not backing yourself into a corner. You don't need to just look at it and say, oh, you don't want.

Kyle Buenger [00:39:07]:
To be a year from now looking back going, man, I'm still grinding and I'm still in the same boat. Because I'm telling you, that's what. And the whole time you're thinking, I just need. Insert whatever contrived idiocy. You think in your head that you just need to get over that hump. It's always something. Yeah. Just need that.

Kyle Buenger [00:39:26]:
Just need a few more cars. That's what I was thinking. I just need a few more cars. I got everything down. I just need a few more cars.

Lucas [00:39:31]:
I have learned from you, too, that just because you're busy doesn't mean you're profitable. Yeah.

David Roman [00:39:35]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Lucas [00:39:36]:
I already know that.

David Roman [00:39:37]:
Yeah. And so I think there's a. I think there's a ton of opportunity here for you. I think that you're in a good market for it, and I think that you can take this and run with it, but you need to go raise your prices, Right. And then you need to put a paycheck on there, like, right now. That way you can begin to build some value here. And the other thing is, is like, I remember hiring my first employee when I'd been taking draws, right? And so I didn't realize how much that was gonna cost. I just imagined that it was gonna be the same as me paying myself.

David Roman [00:40:06]:
And then all of a sudden, while I had workers comp. And I had to have all this other stuff. Now, let me ask you about that, because I think it was Nathan Bryant who said it. We were talking to him one time, and he said, I recognize that my business is a job because I'm unwilling to expand beyond where I Am right now. And so I know that I have to have additional protections so I can continue to earn income if something happens to me because I have a job right now and so I don't have that security. What are you doing for that?

Lucas [00:40:35]:
I have nothing in place for that right now.

David Roman [00:40:37]:
Okay. Thinking disability, short term, long term.

Lucas [00:40:40]:
Oh, yeah, all that. No. Yeah, Definitely going to have to do it.

David Roman [00:40:43]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:40:44]:
Sooner than later would be nice.

Kyle Buenger [00:40:46]:
What you want to do is add that into your costs right now before you start calculating what your price is going to be. Yeah. Because you need to find out. So maybe you don't raise your prices tomorrow. Maybe you do. You raise your prices tomorrow. But know that, hey, I'm gonna have to tack on something here.

David Roman [00:40:59]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:41:00]:
Increasing insurances have to be factored in and saying, yeah, I do need to pay for what happens if I get hurt. I break a leg or whatever. There's no income coming in.

Lucas [00:41:09]:
Nope.

Kyle Buenger [00:41:09]:
What do we. What am I going to do? Who's going to feed my family and who's going to pay the bills? Roll that all into your cost.

David Roman [00:41:16]:
Let me ask you this. And you don't have to. You don't have to get the exact number.

Kyle Buenger [00:41:21]:
Right.

David Roman [00:41:22]:
I'm not trying to dig too far into your business. What were you earning before?

Lucas [00:41:26]:
So it was on average, because it was a slightly floating play scale, it was about 46 bucks an hour. So I think it's like 93 a year. I'm going to guess.

David Roman [00:41:35]:
How many hours are you working a week right now?

Lucas [00:41:38]:
I'm going to say probably about. I know. Well, what do you consider work actually out on the streets or still at home doing, you know, the payroll. Doing.

David Roman [00:41:47]:
Well, I mean, it's all. It all really is. So if that's your value. So if you're going to work that kind of hours, like you could go to a shop and work that kind of hours and make that kind of money.

Lucas [00:41:57]:
So I'm going to say probably 5560 a week.

David Roman [00:41:59]:
Okay. So that's 2530 a week plus payroll taxes have to come out of that.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:06]:
And then you add another 35% to that.

David Roman [00:42:10]:
So that's 3,415 times four. That's 13,662. That's got to come out of that bottom line every single month. Ain't many months that there's 13,662 there, right?

Kyle Buenger [00:42:21]:
Yep.

David Roman [00:42:22]:
And so it just makes me say for your sake, you add that insurance, you add those additional coverages.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:31]:
You are.

David Roman [00:42:31]:
Going to have to get more work done. And you're going to have to charge a lot more.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:34]:
Right.

David Roman [00:42:35]:
And I'm not saying go get a job. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying you have got to get these finances figured out and start making it work.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:41]:
If dude had bought your, your Toyota.

David Roman [00:42:44]:
Dealy.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:47]:
Did you feel like he was just unapproachable? Like if I come to him and tell him that I need this, he's going to say no immediately. So you didn't bother.

Lucas [00:42:56]:
So the first conversation, he was pretty.

Kyle Buenger [00:42:57]:
Just no negotiation that, hey, our first.

Lucas [00:43:01]:
Conversation, you know, when I told him I bought it and you know, this is what I want or was planning to do.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:06]:
Well, I'm saying like before, before that. Before that though, would you have floated the idea?

Lucas [00:43:11]:
I probably would have. I just. I just did.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:14]:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I feel like my employees feel bad about asking. I feel like they, they freaking.

David Roman [00:43:24]:
Eric went and bought a 5 gas the other day.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:27]:
Why?

David Roman [00:43:27]:
I don't know. I would have bought it. No, it's not.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:31]:
It's a good.

David Roman [00:43:32]:
It's a stupid snap on and the battery's bad in and it can't be replaced.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:36]:
The tip too. The tips go out all the time and then you got to ship them in and they don't come back for six months. It's ridiculous.

David Roman [00:43:41]:
Absolutely ridiculous. But, but no, I'm never gonna get.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:46]:
Sponsored by snap on. You keep talking trash on snap, snap on.

David Roman [00:43:48]:
I'm not talking trash on snap on. This is. He bought one off of a tool truck that had been on it for years because no other technician even knows what it does.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:56]:
So stupid.

David Roman [00:43:58]:
Yeah, I, I agree. I.

Kyle Buenger [00:43:59]:
Why, why did you do that?

David Roman [00:44:01]:
I don't know. He knows this is against my rules.

Kyle Buenger [00:44:04]:
My guys know to run the tool guy off. They do. No, the tool guys don't bother coming in. Like, they do come in and they're nice and polite, but everybody runs them off because I don't want them buying anything like, okay, you need a socket or you need a wrench or whatever. But you know what they do? They go down to. They go down to Harbor Freight or there's a local tool place called Clark Tool and they sell like Yearwrench and Milwaukee and they sell some pretty good brands and they go down there and they buy whatever random tool they need. But anything, like large, I think they feel bad about asking. It's like, hey, we need this.

David Roman [00:44:42]:
It's probably because we both have these reactions and we don't realize that it comes off As I don't have a reaction. You have a reaction to everything.

Kyle Buenger [00:44:51]:
Yeah, but. But it's not like, why do you need that? Like, I don't give them the third degree.

David Roman [00:44:56]:
Well, I know you don't have to say anything. Your face says it all. We just don't discuss that at lunch.

Kyle Buenger [00:45:01]:
We just.

David Roman [00:45:01]:
We've seen the pictures.

Kyle Buenger [00:45:03]:
That's not my. That's not my initial, like, visceral reaction is not like, I get excited if they come at me and they're like, hey, I think we could really utilize this. I'd be like, yeah, let's do it now. Either I can afford it or not. I tell them, I'm like, how much is it? 5,000. I can't do that right now, but give me a month and like, yeah, we'll save it up. Or, you know, I'll put it on credit for two months or whatever. Right.

Kyle Buenger [00:45:31]:
You figure out a way, did you.

David Roman [00:45:33]:
If that had not happened, would you have still been disgruntled and left anyway?

Lucas [00:45:39]:
I'd probably. I honestly, if he wouldn't have fired me, I probably would have stuck around for another year because I was using that time to then pay off the tools and stuff like that so that when I wanted to.

Kyle Buenger [00:45:48]:
Yeah, but I'm saying, like, it. Would you. If he had. If he had bought the. The. Let's say you had. If you had a. If you had felt that he was approachable about it and be like, hey, we're waiting two to three weeks for these remotes.

Kyle Buenger [00:46:02]:
Can we just pick up a Toyota tool or know, whatever? And he was like, yeah, okay, let's do it.

Lucas [00:46:07]:
Yeah. Probably would still be there.

Kyle Buenger [00:46:09]:
We probably.

Lucas [00:46:09]:
Probably wouldn't have any issues. Yeah.

David Roman [00:46:11]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:46:12]:
You know, what I ended up doing was with Brandon is Brandon gets bored easily. Like, bored. Right. And he's a quick learner. You know, rabbit. Like, he goes down the rabbit trails. He. He says that about me, but he's the exact same way.

David Roman [00:46:28]:
Yeah, he is, for sure.

Kyle Buenger [00:46:29]:
He, like, he. He goes down these paths where he gets super excited about something and he learns everything he can about that thing. But then he's like, I got nothing else. Like, I haven't found anything else that is interesting me, because it's nothing new. I'm just listening to the same garbage over and over again. So I'm bored about that. So it goes down some other rabbit trail. And I knew that.

Kyle Buenger [00:46:49]:
I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to keep him engaged. Like, I can't when he comes to work. It's like, hey, I need to do this gasket dink and he's gonna be bored, right? So I got him hooked up with Mike Christofferson. Yeah, right. And his son. They run. What's the name of the business I should know?

David Roman [00:47:09]:
They write you checks?

Kyle Buenger [00:47:10]:
They write me checks. I should know. I'm sorry, I'm working dreams. I'm sorry. Anyway, they, they do like, they, they do. They do like all sorts of weird crazy stuff, right? Like board level, like hexadecimal level, like.

Lucas [00:47:28]:
Soldering and Soldering you prongs?

Kyle Buenger [00:47:29]:
No, no, like they go into the program and they like jack around with the programs. Like, hey, I'm going to rewrite the.

Lucas [00:47:35]:
VIN on the rewriting the software?

Kyle Buenger [00:47:36]:
Yeah, they rewrite the software, but they've got software that they've developed that'll rewrite the software. And then they go and teach classes on how to. Hey, this is how we open up the hexadecimal code. And this is how you find the vin. This is how you can rewrite the VIN on a module that shouldn't have the ability to rewrite the vin.

Lucas [00:47:53]:
Sign me up.

David Roman [00:47:54]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:47:55]:
You haven't been to one of the classes?

David Roman [00:47:57]:
Yeah, they do classes.

Lucas [00:47:57]:
The longest thing I've come to are the Keith Perkin ones on the L1 training.

David Roman [00:48:01]:
Yeah, this. He goes all over the country.

Kyle Buenger [00:48:03]:
And he goes all over the country. So I'll get, I'll get you his information and I'll look to see when he's doing the next class. He's all over the country. He's out of Utah. Okay, so he's not that far away. Yeah, no, I mean these big states, but I'm saying he's not that far away. And so, so I told him, I reached out to him and I'm like, hey, if you want to expand into Kansas City and find like I don't want to find the shop, I don't want to do the 500 to hand out card. I don't want to do any of that.

Kyle Buenger [00:48:27]:
But if you need somebody to do the program and semi tech now. So what happens now is they take the lead in and they'll dispatch the work because they have a whole system, right? They'll dispatch the work and they'll send a message to Brandon and go, hey, so and so transmission shop needs a pre program on XYZ module. And then he comes to us and he goes, hey, I got a module to program. And he just takes a long lunch or he comes in late for that day. And so he'll go out and he'll program and you'll program the whatever and then he'll come back. Now, I pay him the whole time.

Lucas [00:49:00]:
I'm saying that's through your company.

Kyle Buenger [00:49:02]:
No, no. So Kristofferson's company takes all of the money and they just give me a little kickback. I'm paying Brandon the whole time. Like, he gets a set salary. He's hourly guaranteed. Hourly, right. And he gets paid even though he's not at my shop making me any money. Like, he stopped working for me.

Kyle Buenger [00:49:26]:
Just to keep him engaged. Yeah, just to keep him engaged. Now sometimes it's a pain in the ass, I'm not going to lie. Because we're super busy and it's like, I got to go program a car. And I'm like, hey. And it's way up north, so it's going to be 30 minute drive there or 30 minute back or whatever. But it does keep him engaged. Like, and.

Kyle Buenger [00:49:44]:
And Christophersons are awesome. They keep sending them tools. I haven't had to buy shit. And so like all these OE tools just showed up and he's like, I'm like, hey, pull out the force scan so we can reprogram or mess with this whatever on this Ford. And Brandon's like, what are you talking about? I got the OE tool. I'll do this real quick.

David Roman [00:50:04]:
Adios.

Kyle Buenger [00:50:05]:
And I'm like, oh, yeah, do it real quick.

David Roman [00:50:09]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:50:10]:
Awesome.

David Roman [00:50:11]:
We're compiling a larger and larger collection of OE tools. Like, we're. We're definitely getting a little over the top with it. Talk about systems. Then your booking and dispatching system. How are you managing your workflow? In other words, like a management system. Are you all on QuickBooks?

Lucas [00:50:32]:
Everything's on QuickBooks right now.

David Roman [00:50:35]:
Okay.

Lucas [00:50:35]:
I'm looking into going back to a like tech metric or something like that just to help. That's gonna be shopware.

Kyle Buenger [00:50:48]:
He's gonna be like, shopware.

David Roman [00:50:51]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:50:52]:
So something's gonna slip in, speed the process up. Because the way I do it, I take pictures of everything. I'm like, I pre scan everything, post scan, everything. That goes right onto the scan tools. That gets downloaded directly into my email.

Kyle Buenger [00:51:06]:
Every.

Lucas [00:51:06]:
I take pictures of everything, of processes, programming, more testing. Yeah, I'm glad you've learned that there was actually a cap so that.

David Roman [00:51:13]:
Yeah, I know, right? Dump Mountain Dew all over yourself.

Lucas [00:51:16]:
Exactly. So everything is documented. So I'm like, when I do my backups every week, I'm almost backing up 40 gigs of information just from like pictures and stuff. Like that. Yeah, from day to day. So.

David Roman [00:51:28]:
Well, yeah, into a system with a.

Kyle Buenger [00:51:30]:
Shopware, you could attach it to the notes, it goes into the cloud and it's always there. And it's always there.

David Roman [00:51:38]:
That.

Lucas [00:51:38]:
And then you just hit one button, it goes straight to the customer. I'm not sitting there having to upload everything onto an email and then the email's full, send it to the client, do another email back and forth. And then I was talking to Cody yesterday and he's transcribing all of his stuff through AI.

David Roman [00:51:53]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:51:53]:
So now I'm looking into that. So instead of sitting there typing for 10 minutes on five different diagnostics, that is now an hour of my time wasted. I could be putting tools away while I'm transcribing to the AI and it's putting everything on there. And then when I'm done putting my tools away, I just hit, click, print the invoice, go get paid.

David Roman [00:52:09]:
Yeah, for sure. And I think that the cool thing about shopware would be print Jack.

Kyle Buenger [00:52:13]:
You send them the link. It's got a pay, pay me here button. They click on here and they pay.

Lucas [00:52:18]:
I've done that a couple of times. I'm just, I'm so old school. I love, I love killing trees.

David Roman [00:52:23]:
So here's the thing is, is that now we can tie it to the VIN and so we can go back and we can search a plate number, we can search a VIN number, we can search a make and model, we.

Kyle Buenger [00:52:34]:
Can search history on that.

Lucas [00:52:35]:
That's the biggest thing I'm running into. So my, my biggest client that I have, he' of my business right now. The amount of testing I'm doing for him, I end up having to change the way I save my files. So I usually just save it under the customer's name or shop name and then the RO number. There's everything there for him now. It's his business name and then the like gm, Ford, Nissan, whatever. And then it's got to go to the year and then it goes the last eight of the vin.

Kyle Buenger [00:53:04]:
You're going to be a headache with all that.

David Roman [00:53:05]:
It is, yeah, yeah.

Lucas [00:53:07]:
That was the only workaround.

Kyle Buenger [00:53:08]:
So the next thing you need to.

David Roman [00:53:09]:
Add is shopware into your expenses.

Kyle Buenger [00:53:12]:
Yeah, expenses.

David Roman [00:53:15]:
I think at the end of the day, where we're at right now, Kyle, is that we gotta look at the fact that prices have got to go up.

Kyle Buenger [00:53:22]:
Right.

David Roman [00:53:22]:
And I think that's the number one thing. And I think that I would talk to an insurance agent and say, hey, if I wanted to add Disability, short term and long term. If I wanted to pay myself. Right. Because, I mean, let's be real here. I get trying to invest into the business, but, like, if you're investing into the business, so I almost would say, in your shoes, what I would do is I would write myself that check, and then I would say that I'm reinvesting that in the business as a loan, a shareholder loan back to the business. And because, like, if you could earn that, going to work for somebody else, you're giving yourself a false sense of security. You're giving yourself a false sense of success because you're not really making what you should be making or what you could be making.

David Roman [00:54:10]:
And you're saying, well, I'm doing this. Someday I'll. Right. Zig Ziglar. Someday I'll get there. Someday if I just fix enough cars, someday, if I do this, someday this will work out and I'll build enough that it'll happen. No, you have to build a system that makes it work. And so if you're putting on there, hey, I worked for 60 hours this week, and I'm worth $46 an hour.

David Roman [00:54:33]:
And you were doing negative $25,000 in net profit, bro. This is not worth it.

Lucas [00:54:39]:
It's not going to sustain itself.

David Roman [00:54:40]:
Right. Like, what do I have to do to change this? What has to happen? Right. Because I think that shop owners fool themselves all the time. They convince themselves, oh, this is working and this is sustainable. Well, yeah, but then you. You break your arm, you get in a car accident, the car's down for a week. Guess what? Well, you're not. You're not making any money now.

David Roman [00:55:01]:
And then all of a sudden something happens and you can't work. Like, you're really up shit creek now.

Lucas [00:55:07]:
Yep.

David Roman [00:55:07]:
Right. Let's say that you get in a car accident and you can't turn wrenches anymore.

Kyle Buenger [00:55:12]:
That's.

Lucas [00:55:12]:
That's what ended my career.

David Roman [00:55:13]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:55:14]:
Car accident and shoulder.

David Roman [00:55:15]:
Yeah. And so I think you need to be thinking about that, and I think you need to be fixing that sooner than later. I know what everybody's going to say, oh, my gosh, he doesn't have the money to pay those payroll taxes, and he doesn't. If he were to pay himself what he's worth and put all that on there and then do a shareholder loan. Like, there's this implication and that implication. I think it's worth it if you want the business to be successful, because I think it's going to show you it's going to open your Eyes to the fact, like, hey, this is not working. I have to do something different.

Kyle Buenger [00:55:42]:
Yep.

David Roman [00:55:43]:
You know, so that's my take on it. David, who are you texting?

Kyle Buenger [00:55:47]:
I'm looking up the pricing on shopware.

David Roman [00:55:53]:
Tell him how much to add to his P and L. Yeah, he's got to know.

Kyle Buenger [00:55:56]:
Hey, I haven't updated the website in.

David Roman [00:55:59]:
Like, five or six years. You got. You got really, really obsessed with medical stuff and stopped working on the website.

Kyle Buenger [00:56:08]:
Just the website. Everything else is getting updated. Get out of here.

David Roman [00:56:11]:
Occasionally.

Kyle Buenger [00:56:12]:
Occasionally.

David Roman [00:56:15]:
Hang on. I can. It's almost. It's.

Lucas [00:56:19]:
While you guys are doing that, can we go ahead and make David uncomfortable for a second?

David Roman [00:56:23]:
Yeah, sure.

Lucas [00:56:24]:
So I brought gifts.

David Roman [00:56:25]:
Oh, Lord.

Lucas [00:56:26]:
We know how David loves gifts.

David Roman [00:56:27]:
Yeah, he does. Oh, I love this. This sounds awesome.

Kyle Buenger [00:56:33]:
Why is everybody insisting on being making me uncomfortable? I don't understand that.

David Roman [00:56:37]:
Hey, dude didn't take his clothes off.

Kyle Buenger [00:56:39]:
So.

Lucas [00:56:40]:
So there was an episode, something about green M M's. So this is for Lucas so that he can shake it on the mic.

David Roman [00:56:50]:
So that he's awesome. Yeah. You are the man.

Lucas [00:56:53]:
Just remember, you got to shake it on the mic to. That's it for his post production.

David Roman [00:56:57]:
Here you go, David. Dude, thank you, man. That is phenomenal.

Lucas [00:57:03]:
Another one now. So this is kind of for David, but it's more for. I think it's the unofficial mascot of his shop, Right? Can't remember. It was a. Was it a beaver? Yes, it was a beaver or something like that, right?

Kyle Buenger [00:57:13]:
Groundhog.

Lucas [00:57:14]:
Groundhog. Thank you. Thank you. So I know the winter months are coming, so I got something.

David Roman [00:57:23]:
Colin's the guest of the year.

Lucas [00:57:26]:
Okay.

Kyle Buenger [00:57:27]:
So.

Lucas [00:57:27]:
And then this next one, it's got.

Kyle Buenger [00:57:29]:
It's got holes in the ears.

Lucas [00:57:35]:
So like I said, I listen to the podcast now, but so what? I call my wife an FBI agent. So Ed never told me when the first one came out. My wife found it. I listened. I think there was up to 10 after that one.

David Roman [00:57:48]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:57:48]:
I didn't know what was going on. I went back to one.

Kyle Buenger [00:57:50]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:57:51]:
And I've been listening to that. I'm like, so.

Kyle Buenger [00:57:53]:
See, we tell people that. People do that.

Lucas [00:57:54]:
They're like, I don't know, what am I gonna do? I've got an hour drive into Chandler.

David Roman [00:57:58]:
Yeah.

Lucas [00:57:58]:
So I listen to you guys, and then on hour back home. So I'm catching up. So if this has happened since the last episode that I've listened to. Sorry. But, David.

Kyle Buenger [00:58:14]:
Do you know how many honey buns I have now? Honey buns I have now.

Lucas [00:58:19]:
So I know you always say half, but I know with the thing that everything's going up, I thought I'd just go ahead and give you.

Kyle Buenger [00:58:24]:
Yeah, jumbo honey bun. And I gotta legit post this.

David Roman [00:58:29]:
Oh man, he just got that shot. Where does he sign me?

Kyle Buenger [00:58:32]:
On the dotted 100 calories. That is insane. Who eats these things?

David Roman [00:58:36]:
You do. Look, here's one right here.

Kyle Buenger [00:58:41]:
Right here. 2, 200, 200, 250 bucks a month. Okay, 250 bucks a month if you go monthly. If you pay annually, it's 224, but it's 250 bucks a month. And it gets unlimited users the parts matrix, which you don't need. Kind of a maintenance builder, two way texting. And you can do, and do the shopware payments thing, but then you got to sign up with 360 payment. So you sign up for 360 payments for your credit card processing.

David Roman [00:59:10]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [00:59:11]:
And then, and then they'll have the button for to pay.

Lucas [00:59:15]:
I just have to hit for their credit card. I just have to make sure that, you know, they don't require like hardline because I know some.

David Roman [00:59:20]:
No, they don't. No, no.

Kyle Buenger [00:59:21]:
This is all mobile. Yeah, yeah.

David Roman [00:59:23]:
You do this from your cell phone.

Kyle Buenger [00:59:24]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:59:25]:
Right. Like you make the invoice, you can write the invoice, everything on your cell phone. You add the pictures from your cell phone. Everything you do, if you download it from the scan tool, you can upload the PDF in there. You can make lines for like your testing. Because that's what we do is that we have like, we have a peace of mind process. So we go through the peace of mind and it requires them to check off. I checked this, this, this and this.

David Roman [00:59:46]:
And it's not the dvi. The, the DVI is separate. But the peace of mind process says like, hey, did you put the protective equipment in the car? Did you check the fluids? Did you like the bare minimum guaranteed. You have to do this on every car. And then we have a level one testing routine. And the level one testing routine, it's. Did you verify the client's concern?

Kyle Buenger [01:00:04]:
Right.

David Roman [01:00:04]:
Have you confirmed it? What are the diagnostic trouble codes? And then it depends on which one it is. Some of them, like if it's a fuel system issue, it's like, hey, what's your math? Grams per second, what's your long term, what's your short term? That kind of thing. And so we collect all of that data in there. And so the reason I think that's important, especially for you being mobile, if you want to expand you know, Cody was in here saying, how do I teach somebody how to do this? Well, if every job you do, you build a testing routine for. And I'm not talking about going out into the weeds. I'm talking about, like, what were the basics to get to where you were. And you think, hey, this is a Toyota and it has a P0446. Okay, what test am I going to do and how am I going to rule that out? So now create a job and says, Toyota P446.

David Roman [01:00:48]:
P0446 or 4, 66 or whatever. Yeah. And now I have my testing routine built. Well, now if somebody starts working for me, hey, I've got a Toyota evap issue. All right, cool. Hey, Bob, I'm gonna need you to go down there. I'm sending you the ticket right now. So I transfer the ticket to Bob, and it's already got the testing I want done to start with.

David Roman [01:01:09]:
Right. And now we have a system. We have a process for dealing with that issue. And the more of the jobs you do between now and then, now you've built this out in a way that standardizes your operation so it helps scale it and gets to where it can make money that you need to run the business.

Lucas [01:01:27]:
Yeah. Gody was showing me yesterday, he does the same thing for programming. So if he's done a program on vehicles or something like that and he can't get to it, somebody else has got to do it. All they got to do is log into his, whatever, the site that he's on and there's a step by step thing.

David Roman [01:01:40]:
Yeah.

Lucas [01:01:40]:
Tells you exactly how to do it.

David Roman [01:01:42]:
Absolutely. Well, and so here's what I like about the way Shopware does it is they have to click off on a button that checks and says, I've done this.

Kyle Buenger [01:01:48]:
There's no time to do it. Right.

David Roman [01:01:50]:
And so they have to check. And so if they don't check off on that, in other words, you've got this list of things that's to be done. And if they don't say, yes, I did that and yes, it's green, or make a note to say, no, I did not do that, and here's why I did not do that, then they falsified the report. Right. So now we have an accountability system built in that doesn't just say like, hey, I'm telling you to go do this, because if it's not on paper, it's a lie. Now it is on paper or digital. Right. And I'm saying this was the rule.

Kyle Buenger [01:02:20]:
And on the Checklist. You can attach pictures to the individual check boxes. So if you've got a, like verify X, check it off, take a picture of it to show at least for the customer that they see. See what I'm saying?

Lucas [01:02:33]:
That it's been checked.

Kyle Buenger [01:02:34]:
Yeah, yeah.

David Roman [01:02:35]:
And think about that, right? Because now we've built a system around it that when you begin to grow the business, it's scalable, Right. It's something that we have.

Kyle Buenger [01:02:44]:
It's not even that, too. You've got a value add for the customer.

David Roman [01:02:47]:
Yeah, yeah. You've got the documentation. You send it to the client.

Kyle Buenger [01:02:50]:
Documentation with the customer. Show. Well, the reason why I was $400. Sure. Look at all this work that I did here. And you can present that the customer then doesn't question it because you didn't just get under the hood and then come out and go, hey, it just needs this part and then walk away and bill for $400.

David Roman [01:03:07]:
And the other advantage of this is because. And I don't know how often this happens in mobile. We'd have to ask Cody. But think about this. You work on a car, he sells that car, and now that car gets in an accident, something happens, it's your word against his, what you did, Right? So now if I don't have documentation on that car, that VIN number, well, I'm putting it all in QuickBooks.

Kyle Buenger [01:03:30]:
Right?

David Roman [01:03:30]:
But what if something gets mixed up and we put the wrong car on that? What if there's something where something gets disconnected somewhere and I type in the wrong thing or I upload the wrong file and now that wasn't in there, my pre scan wasn't there and I can't find it. Right. This helps ensure that that does not happen. And so if you ever have to go to court, you can print this out or you can show it to the attorney and the judge and say, no, you can see right here what I did. Here's what I disclaimed. I told him not to do this and I told him not to do that, Right? Think about. Think about the Mini Cooper with Keith, right? And the resistors in the airbag, right?

Lucas [01:04:04]:
I haven't heard this one.

David Roman [01:04:05]:
Yeah. So he's done a whole video series on the fact that this car came in and had resistors in the airbag. And dude was trying to tell him, hey, just. Just put the airbag module in it and, and overlook all that stuff. And Keith's like, no, I'm not doing that. Right, because like, you could come back and say it was me who did that. I'm going to document this, I'm going to fix it. Right.

David Roman [01:04:21]:
He's like, no, just take those pictures off there. Don't do that, don't do that. Think about that from your perspective. Like I'm in here and I'm telling you I'm not going to fix this and I won't do it like that. And then there's a bill for you coming out. What if he says, hey, nah, this dude fixed it.

Kyle Buenger [01:04:38]:
Right.

David Roman [01:04:38]:
And so those are things to think about. And he likes. Yeah, shopware really helps you with that.

Kyle Buenger [01:04:43]:
There was a video that Royalty auto put out.

Lucas [01:04:46]:
Mm, love those guys. Great videos.

David Roman [01:04:49]:
Yeah, for sure.

Kyle Buenger [01:04:49]:
It was a Nissan Altima 2024. The guy had just bought it, 10,000 miles on it. AC wasn't working. So he drops it off and says, can do an evac and recharge. And they, they did. They did an evac, recharge. Guess what didn't fix it. They scanned the car.

Kyle Buenger [01:05:05]:
It had two codes. Front radar obstruction block or something or another. And then pressure sensor circuit malfunction for the ac. And he's like, well that makes sense why the AC is not working. We got a pressure sensor malfunction. I want to evacuate and recharge it with 1234 YF without scanning it, but whatever, Right? Yeah, I would have scanned it first. And then so they start looking for the pressure sensor. Now the pressure sensor is like on the line by the condenser up somewhere out front there.

Kyle Buenger [01:05:34]:
It's a Nissan. Right. So he starts looking and he starts seeing things.

David Roman [01:05:39]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [01:05:39]:
And all of a sudden he's like, that wire's hanging in a weird spot. Why is that hanging down? Why is this. And then he starts looking at the rest of the car and he's like, well, those bolts aren't put in properly and this bracket's not right. And this is being held in with bubble gum. Apparently somebody had gotten into a front end accident on this. They got the insurance money, didn't fix it properly, took it to their guy who then bondoed and painted this thing, slapped it back together, didn't fix any. Now back in the day be fine.

David Roman [01:06:14]:
Yeah.

Kyle Buenger [01:06:15]:
What have we thrown into the mix?

Lucas [01:06:16]:
Yeah. Ados and yeah.

Kyle Buenger [01:06:19]:
Like, I don't understand. Why would you touch the car like, and then you drove it. You have no idea what the car's gonna do with the ados being all crazy.

Lucas [01:06:27]:
Did he go in any under bridges? I'm like, did it stop under the bridge?

Kyle Buenger [01:06:31]:
I think they've gotten a little smarter about that since then. I think they've gotten less, maybe less sunset. I don't know. Well, I didn't do anything weird in the car. At least identified that there's something wrong with the front radar because I think it was just pointing down like it was just facing the front bumper. It wasn't actually looking out into the road and identified this at least an obstruction. I can't read the road properly. Yeah, but I stopped the video at that point there.

Kyle Buenger [01:06:57]:
But. And the moral stories. Get a pre purchase inspection. Like, yeah, get a pre purchase inspection. You can't go after the dealer. The dealer bought the car. They don't know what the hell they're looking at. It was clean.

Kyle Buenger [01:07:07]:
Car looked pretty good from 40ft away. The paint looked okay. It wasn't until you got up close and you saw the runs and the drips and the Bondo and the. The gaps all messed up and the creases.

David Roman [01:07:19]:
Well, I mean, think about Ken Miller in that. So we. One of our other podcast is a collision show, right? And we're building it out right now. And he. He owns a collision shop and he is the president of the New Jersey aasp. And long story short, they have what's called the Northeast show up there and it's a huge collision show. It's like the size of Apex, except it's just collision. And Ken came out and we were all at an event a while back, and he shows us this video and he said, it's a brand new car.

David Roman [01:07:53]:
And they fixed this like, little paint area in the back of the car. And his guy said, hey, do you want us to do this inspection? And Ken said, absolutely, you're doing the inspection. That's what the book says. You're doing it. And they said, well, we just wanted to ask because it's like pretty minor. And he said, no, he said, you never take that chance, right? You do the inspection. So Ken said the guys tear it all down and they don't want to do it because it like tears interior components out and it breaks clips. And like, all this stuff has to be done.

David Roman [01:08:20]:
It can be a pain in the butt. They get into it and they find out that the car had been in an accident like a thousand miles before this thing happened. And so when they get it apart, they realize that the dudes notched the seat belt so the seat belt retractor doesn't catch anymore. And then he put resistors on it. And so this guy, the owner of the car, had PTSD from the accident because he got hurt in the accident. And so he's been, like, really nervous and about being in an accident again. And he said, you know, I haul my kids around in this car. I can't believe that, you know, somebody would do this.

David Roman [01:08:53]:
And it was an insurer that it was super low insurance pay. It was a cheap insurer. And so it went to a shop, and they said, yeah, send it over to our guy. It'll be fine. But think about the fact that if Ken had not inspected that car, he was the last one to touch it. You know what I mean? And so surely they would know. Well, hey, there would be no reason for that to be done in this case. He just polished a bumper.

Kyle Buenger [01:09:16]:
But would just. What floors me is like, the motoring public has no idea what they're driving. They have no idea. They think.

David Roman [01:09:28]:
Thank you, Juan.

Kyle Buenger [01:09:28]:
All the cars are the same. This 2024 is the same as my 2014. No, no, no. This is a whole different world. Just a car you get in, it's just got extra screens like, no, no, no. There's so much more stuff on this car that you have no idea. They have no idea what they're driving. And what's frustrating is they didn't.

Kyle Buenger [01:09:47]:
Nobody asked for this garbage. Nobody asked for this garbage. They just manufacturers dumped it on everybody. And then they didn't tell anybody that, hey, this is all extra maintenance, extra cost. You have to be extra careful. The body shop you have to take it to, it has to be certified. They got to know what the hell they're doing. You don't want to be sending it to every and just any Joe Schmo.

Kyle Buenger [01:10:06]:
It's not just body work anymore. So messed up. Nobody knows. Nobody. You tell them, and they're like, what? I got what? Oh, my. What? Get out of here.

David Roman [01:10:18]:
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Thank you for being here, brother.

Lucas [01:10:21]:
Appreciate you guys. Thanks.

David Roman [01:10:22]:
Yes, sir.