Changing The Industry Podcast

David Roman 0:00
And now Lucas and I sat down with Bill DeBoer of DeBoer's Auto in Hamburg, New Jersey, at the tools conference 2022. Anyway, I he shared with me the three, the crazy three, the numbers that he does out of three and a half bass. And I know how you do it. You're evil. How do you do it?

Bill DeBoer 0:23
How do we do it? We have a really good team in place

David Roman 0:27
that has such a fluffy answer. I'm not gonna let you slide on that one.

Bill DeBoer 0:32
It's all the people man.

David Roman 0:34
I get on. It's not you doing it by yourself. That's not the point.

Bill DeBoer 0:37
I got a great team.

David Roman 0:39
What happens when you miss diagnose a car? What happens when the part doesn't show up on time? What happens when the bolt breaks? Have we had that in? We had an expedition sold like $5,000 worth of work on this expedition. exhaust manifolds like a whole bunch of work right? And they exhaust manifolds, the bolts there were broken. They came out. And then he bolt he broke a bolt on the starter. And it snapped off because he had to take the start out and he's clean break. Now he's having to drill in a spot where there's no getting to the drill bit like it doesn't fit in there and he's having to finagle away and that turned into eight hours of finagle in this bolt out.

Lucas Underwood 1:30
I know I can answer for me. That is really finding guys who are skilled at deal.

Bill DeBoer 1:35
I was gonna say the same thing. I got a guy that's

Lucas Underwood 1:38
that's what he doesn't happen.

Bill DeBoer 1:40
They'll spend an extra half hour to make sure it doesn't. Yeah, yeah.

David Roman 1:45
Well, what what?

Bill DeBoer 1:47
We live in the restaurants

Lucas Underwood 1:49
used to through it. Yeah, you get a feel for it. Right. And you feel what it's doing. You hear

David Roman 1:53
you saying he's smashing bear this thing? Guarantee.

Bill DeBoer 1:59
Your guy? Yeah, yeah.

Lucas Underwood 2:06
Well, and you know, the other thing is, is that like, for instance, Eric, you may have met Eric. Oh, Eric was one of my technicians. But, but you know, whereas a lot of guys will spend an hour trying to drill a bolt. Eric, can you usually well to beat on it with a nut and have it out in 10 to 15 minutes, right. There's very few bolts we ended up actually drilling?

Bill DeBoer 2:26
Yeah, there's, I mean, there's plenty of guys out there that do just what you do. I mean, Josh knees are for me. And I mean, he's one of the best that we've had at that stuff. So yeah. And if somebody's struggling in the shop, they know to grab them and right.

David Roman 2:39
So they're just used to doing them, like, stupid work like this. It's not stupid. It's Oh, it's stupid. It's ridiculously stupid. Well, yeah, it's, well, obviously, it's a great skill, but you know, I don't go. I don't hire. What are you doing?

Bill DeBoer 2:58
Making adjustments? What

David Roman 2:59
are you doing? What kind of adjustments? Good adjustments. Feel like, it's not like it's a bad investment.

Lucas Underwood 3:08
Just because I'm the one making it.

David Roman 3:09
So I need to hire somebody. I need to ask him. Yeah, I don't know breaks off in the transmission on the starter. How long is it going to take you to get the sucker out and it feels like 30 minutes you're hired? Versus

Bill DeBoer 3:24
anything that says I want to bring it in the first place.

Lucas Underwood 3:27
Yeah, exactly. He's buried that buddy. Yeah. I mean,

David Roman 3:31
it's smash the barrel, we call him smash the bear for a reason.

Lucas Underwood 3:34
I mean, and the thing is that if we're getting there's been situations in the past, I remember, I think the worst one I've ever had the most embarrassing tech mistake I've ever made personally, is I was I had a sick so high pressure oil pump cover off, right and I had the pump out. And I was taking the I was working in the back and I had taken the know I didn't have the pump out, I was taking the the connector off of the back where the branch tubes go down. And it's got eight millimeter bolts in it. And I pull it up and I'm like, I gotta make sure I hold on to that. And it slipped out of my hand. And so it fell back in the back of the time and cover. So like I spend all this time with a magnet try and find it look everywhere can't find it ended up taking the transmission on this stupid thing, taking the back cover off of it. And then later on, like I'm talking about six hours later transmissions sitting in the floor, I turn around and look and realize the bolt has rolled down against the van on the top of the transmission. It wasn't ever I swear to God,

David Roman 4:40
it happens way more at my shop. But I would be comfortable admitting. Okay, and I'm saying like if you've got six bays, or eight bays, that turns into okay, like step away from it. Knock out this other car in this extra Bay you have oh yeah in three Read a half bass that's not doing the volume that you're doing the sort of thing. Not that bass got a turn.

Bill DeBoer 5:05
Yeah. So you drop it and pushing it out. I mean, yeah. So I say we have three and a half phase,

David Roman 5:10
and you only that's my point is like, you have to drop it and push it out, because they have to, you have to get the revenue out. But that takes 2030 minutes to drop it out. You know, get your bolts in order, get things cleaned up, drop it, and then we'll push it out, and we gotta get another card in the door. But like, that eats up your time. And unless you're running extra hours, slower,

Bill DeBoer 5:32
Bill dare to right. So like, we're padding estimates. I mean, when we're in there, and we're doing our write ups. I mean, the guys are adding the labor time for those risk components to so we're not losing time when that happens.

Lucas Underwood 5:43
So let me ask you this, right, like I'm, I'm in a, I'm in the boat of, we're getting ready to move in. Right now. How big of a shop? Are you thinking?

Bill DeBoer 5:53
We're gonna be building a 3000? Square foot six Bay, okay, on top of the three and a half, you have no, right. So when I say three and a half, there's, you know, we got two twin posts up front, we got the alignment rack in the back that's in front of mid rise, and then we got an outside lift. So those three are impeded. And I consider them half days. Yeah, he's.

Lucas Underwood 6:14
So you know, in my shop right now, right, we've got two full size bays, they're in completely different places, right, like one's on the back of the building ones on the side of the building, they're completely sailing

David Roman 6:25
there to like, push up the hill to get to one.

Lucas Underwood 6:29
It's, it's funny, because like, if you ask anybody about it, they're like, Oh, you got to pull it up and let it roll in. And then like, when you show them, they're like, I was telling Brian Walker the other day, I'm like, Hey, so what you do is you get somebody in the back of the truck, and they hook the J hook on that one's trailer hitch. And when you go up the hill when it's snowing as you hold it to the floor, and you spin all the way to the top of the hill. And then when you let off the throttle and you start to slide back down, they reach down and pull a J hook off that car slides down the hill into the bay. And then I can slide back down the hill while they're in the back of the truck and Brian's I

Bill DeBoer 7:05
hopefully OSHA is not up on the hill, either a binocular

Lucas Underwood 7:08
but so you know, and then Ryan, who's here with me, today, his his Bay is only seven foot tall. So like Ryan, it's this terrible height man, because you can't sit on the chair underneath it. But a creeper is too low. So Ryan works at like this squatted over mid height the all day like it's, it's really terrible. And and you learn to be efficient at those things, like you've learned. And I tell people this all the time, I think. And it frustrates them, especially if they're wanting to buy a shop or build a shop or move into a shop is like don't do anything until you maximize what you got right now. Because you will never truly believe what you can get out of that tiny space unless you do it right now. And then you can really appreciate the space that you got. And you can push for it. So my question for you is you're getting ready to get a lot bigger. Are you going to give them multiple days? Are you going to keep them in a single day?

Bill DeBoer 8:05
Yeah, I think in the beginning. I mean, we believe in running one tech a day. So as quick as I can get that new shop filled with that. I mean, that's what how we'll just keep rolling, you know, right. Yeah, that's the most efficient way.

Lucas Underwood 8:18
Right? Well, and that's, that's the way that I'm going to do it. But the way I'm starting out is is I'm going to start I just had another one we saw I heard Jason who is a Nissan mastertech. And the way that we're going to do is we're going to move in with fortex. And then we're going to slowly ramp up into the full 10 Bay capacity. Now I've got two bays that are going to be one is going to be kind of medium duty and the one beside it is for radars calibrations, so that one may not get someone in it. And then I've got the aligner of course, but I'm just kind of trying to like, play out where do I want to be? And when do I want to hit?

Bill DeBoer 8:53
Are you still running the other shop too? Are you gonna keep that?

Lucas Underwood 8:56
I'm gonna close it. Close that one. Yeah, we'll close it. So we're gonna run both

David Roman 8:59
to put seven hours of evaluations on it tickets.

Bill DeBoer 9:06
Kind of questions that

David Roman 9:09
I just need to kind of figure out how you get to that kind of revenue with the space restriction that you have. And I'm not saying it's not doable. It's absolutely doable. I've seen Lucas do it. Right. But I've also seen seven hours of valuations on his tickets. So Well, I mean, we not that he that he shouldn't charge seven hours of valuations. I'm just saying that takes this particular skill set to tell the customer I need to do with seven hours of evaluations on your car for $1,000 Before I even touch a wrench to fix it.

Bill DeBoer 9:42
So well we don't measure it by hours we track average tech quote. So our guys are running right? Right around 1500 on average per ticket, quoting,

David Roman 9:52
quoting, quoting your what's your sell through rate.

Bill DeBoer 9:57
Our sell through rate is right around 35% Okay, so we're doing a full blown inspection, were quoting everything we're doing 300 500 $600 Aaro.

David Roman 10:05
So maybe two and a half hours, three hour per. Okay, so that seems about right. That's a lot of cars that you're pumping through the shop. I'm just what kind of work are you doing?

Bill DeBoer 10:20
So I mean, it's not a lot, right? We're doing to 60 to 75. Depends on the month, how many days but I'm just used to that volume. That's a lot of volume to somebody, but

Lucas Underwood 10:30
it's, it's more volume than I do. Right. Right. So our average opportunity is 3750. Right now. And at least the last time I checked, and so we sell through about 18 to 20% on that. And so we've got an average repair order of around 1000.

Bill DeBoer 10:48
So your average tech quote, then would be what 3750? Is what you're saying? Yeah. And so

David Roman 10:53
what was it like? Yeah, we're right about that. And same thing we're like, right?

Bill DeBoer 10:58
I mean, you gotta get to a point. But the same

David Roman 11:01
car count I do. We, he has a slightly higher ARL than I do. But two $300 More, or but you can tell him the final numbers, like he's doing 20 $30,000 more a month, and I am. He's got smaller space. But I've seen his seven hour evaluations is all I'm saying. And look, and yours. Your numbers make sense, right. But Oh, holy crap out of like, two bays, really. And then you have an alignment rack, which you can use to do evaluation and stuff like that. I mean, we use our alignment racket, as efficiently as I think you could, but I'm just what kind of, Am I screwing up on the repairs that I'm doing that just my babies are not turning as fast as yours is what I'm saying? Well,

Lucas Underwood 11:44
listen from. I'm your friend. And I feel like I can say this. Every day, we have a conversation about how something got screwed up. And something took longer than it was supposed to. And somebody took a really long poop break. And like, there's only so many

David Roman 11:59
poop breaks. There's breaks at your shop.

Bill DeBoer 12:03
There may be but they don't tell you. Cellphone blocker in there. That's for sure.

Lucas Underwood 12:09
But I mean, you know what I'm saying like that those little inefficiencies add up. Right. And so if there's anything I've learned about it, that that is it. Is that just a few little smaller guys poop

David Roman 12:21
to make them wear bags?

Lucas Underwood 12:23
That would be funny. Eric probably should at this point. But I guess my point is, is that any of those little inefficiencies, right, and I'm not talking about reasonable inefficiencies, like going to the bathroom, everybody goes to method, we take an hour lunch, right? And we sit down and we talk, we hang out. And we, you know, it's not that it's just

Bill DeBoer 12:43
that we do have our lunch. Really?

Lucas Underwood 12:47
Well, I mean, so like, when you do

David Roman 12:49
15 minute breaks in the middle of the day?

Bill DeBoer 12:51
Nope. We just rolled through. They need to break they can take a break. And we don't sit there and bus jobs or anything, but somebody needs to call they can take a call.

Lucas Underwood 13:01
Right? No reason why you can adversarial. Yeah, just enjoy life.

Bill DeBoer 13:05
So we got three texts in the back, we got one service writer up front, we just added a second one because Tina is pregnant, she's going to be going out in the in December sometime with maternity leave, and then Will's gonna backfill for her. And then we also have a parts person that helps build the estimates takes care of the intake of the parts and stuff. So it's all rolling.

David Roman 13:26
He's got a lot of front staff. Right. Do you think that's probably part of it?

Lucas Underwood 13:32
Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. One has indicated more than once that he's

David Roman 13:37
running out his dirty mouth. He doesn't know.

Lucas Underwood 13:40
What is his service advisor.

David Roman 13:43
Don't listen to the podcast. I can say whatever the hell I want about one.

Lucas Underwood 13:46
I sent him a little snippets from time to time.

David Roman 13:49
He doesn't listen. You'll sleep. I get enough for him.

Lucas Underwood 13:55
But but you know, so valid point. For an office staff i Run i run heavier front office staff.

Bill DeBoer 14:03
Yeah, it helps everything flow. I mean,

David Roman 14:07
is that what I'm missing out on? Well, so here's the secret sauce.

Bill DeBoer 14:10
Our sales went up when we added will? Yeah. Are second service advisor. Yeah, so we for instance, for us for out yeah, really said another tech and new sales go out. I mean, it's, well, that's

David Roman 14:22
what I've been doing. I just keep adding more texts. Like you're slow. I'm gonna add another one.

Lucas Underwood 14:28
Well, but but here at the end of the day, right, think about this, is that if if you're going to push the volume through the shop like that, then that means the estimates have to be done sometime around lunch, right? Because each in my shop, the way it's laid out is way too late. We've got most of most of the time, our techs get three appointments a day. Ryan gets five because he runs a lower hour per repair order. And Eric JSLint right.

David Roman 14:57
Okay. I'm interested in what you're doing. I'm asking Bill All right.

Lucas Underwood 15:02
Okay, sorry. So I don't have seven.

David Roman 15:04
Look, I'm not doing seven hours of evaluations, I just, it's not gonna fly.

Lucas Underwood 15:11
Most of mine are most of them are like, I am going to kick your chair, if you say that won't work,

David Roman 15:18
that will work in my area. Seven hours. So

Bill DeBoer 15:21
what are you writing up for seven hours?

Lucas Underwood 15:22
So the case that he's talking about was a cut off? Yeah, one on one in a million? Yeah, no, it was a, it was a right hand drive discovery with a Volkswagen diesel engine in it.

David Roman 15:41
That shouldn't even make it into your shop.

Lucas Underwood 15:43
But now how do you qualify the client? Right? So it had the $225 an hour custom testing rate on it, or custom labor rate for things that are one off. And he wanted, like all of these things dealt with. And he gave us a list of things he wanted dealt with. And I said before I can do anything. Here's what I have to start with. And it's this much, it's $1,400, for me to touch that for me to take that home for me to take the butcher and because it's not exactly perfect when you pick it up the way that you think it should be? This is what it's gonna take. He was probably happy to have somebody look at it too. Right? Yeah. So nobody else would even look at

David Roman 16:17
it. And it's messing with?

Bill DeBoer 16:21
Heck, no, no, we got no time for that, you know, we really, we, you know, we know what's a good fit for us. And we screen it and that we try to, you know, scare people off, but we try to stay in our wheelhouse. You know. There's a lot to be said for that.

Lucas Underwood 16:38
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Qualifying client is really important.

Bill DeBoer 16:42
We talked about wasting time looking for parts and something like that. I mean, oh, yeah.

Lucas Underwood 16:46
Well, and that was the case is is. So when he, when we went into that he was 100% aware of what it was that we were dealing with. And look here, here's the things that we're going to be fixing. Here's the things that you want addressed. This is going to be a month long process, maybe longer, we don't know. And we don't even know then because there were all these custom changes. Like we don't know what the outcomes gonna be. Right? So I would much rather tell him and that ended up backing down. We didn't need all that. So it came back our average testing, we'll do you know, we'll do break evaluations, all evaluations, level one, testing routines, things like that. Now, when I when I see a vehicle, I do a piece of mind evaluation. If it's got evidence of an oil leak, we'll do an oil leak evaluation. If it's got evidence that it needs brakes, need soon,

David Roman 17:38
here's the issues. My push back to you on that. Do you do that? Do we do so it's a 2006? bucal ascertain comes in with a 3.8 and is it's got loose highroad ends, let's say and the bottom of the engine is covered in oil. Do you look at it and go it looks like the valve cover gaskets likely need to be replaced? Probably a timing cover because there's the three eight that's in the oil pan and then just sell it like that. Or do you stop and go? I know you just came in for an oil change. But we need to charge you whatever 70 $80 to do. Really? Evaluation. Yeah,

Bill DeBoer 18:19
yeah, we we definitely charge for that we'd clean it up. You know if we can see it coming right back out if it's that big of a leak every time small really? Yeah, absolutely. Nobody gets in our shop without a charge we have a basic and intermediate. So a basic truth we call it a basic diag but it's you know anything that's a noise a leak. Anything gets released.

David Roman 18:40
Okay, but this is not a I'm looking at it from a this was a customer not a customer concern. This was a technician find okay, this is the the car came in for an oil change nothing else. They just say hey, it's time for an oil change like Okay, so while you're under there needs brakes. Brake Pads are low. Well, we would celebrate inspection Okay, every time every time because how are you going to check the calipers and stuff? Yeah

Bill DeBoer 19:04
don't take sure I'm

David Roman 19:05
but you guys are in Rough Country luckily never let slide we clean them and lubricate them slap them back in.

Lucas Underwood 19:10
But here's the thing is that what you're and I've heard this argument from people before. For me it's not even so much about selling the additional testing. It's about getting permission to touch something on their car or take something apart to make sure I'm making the right recommendation. I don't want to get caught with my pants around my ankles and say Hey, I see your valve covers are leaking we need to replace your valve coverage and then find out something else was leaking somewhere else.

David Roman 19:35
Well what my technicians will say is everything's covered in oil start at the valve covers work our way down. Know

Bill DeBoer 19:43
How do you know that you don't have blow by to like you got to do testing. How do you know that those aren't pushed out because it's got compassion blown into the I mean, you can usually

David Roman 19:51
tell

Lucas Underwood 19:52
but not all right, and Robin like crap

David Roman 19:55
are not running like crap, right?

Bill DeBoer 19:56
But you gotta get paid for your experience too. I mean, that's the thing for me. can't just give this stuff for free. So we, you know, we we went through an extensive period. We worked on it for one quarter, we did one meeting a week, and we went through all the different diag scenarios, you know, no crank, no start, no crank, no star, Eva all the different categories. And we we wrote down what our checklist what our procedure is to cover most cars built in, put it in as a canned job and shop where and you know, we gave the appropriate times because not every like an EVAP could take us an hour and a half. And that's what we built for.

David Roman 20:37
Yeah. So So yeah, evaporator testing is usually pretty high misfire testing New Jersey pretty high. Right? Well, like we have performance. Yeah, yeah. So but again, this is the reason why I keep coming back to this, as I see it differently, a customer comes in and says, I get I've got oil leaks, a little bottle car, or on the ground, can you look at it, unless it's very painfully obvious, or if it's a vehicle that we have a lot of experience with. Because sometimes that'll be the case. We look at it and say, hey, look, we're gonna have to clean this off, we're gonna put dye in the run, we're gonna have to figure out, this was the fee for that forever $110 or whatever the charges, right? But we saw a lot of valve cover gaskets, or we'll do a lot of 200 J series engines. It looks like the crank seals leaking, the crank seals not leaking. As the oil pump seals behind the crank seal, right? We just have a lot of experience with that. And we know, or the back of the Honda K 24 engine is covered in oil, it's probably those stupid VTEC, solenoid doodad that sits on the back of the head. And so I don't need to charge for an eval for that.

Lucas Underwood 21:45
And I agree with that when you know a car, right? And now I'm doing my peace of mind. If I if I blatantly see it, I will call it right, I don't have a problem with blatantly calling it. I will not do that with breaks, right? Because the situation with the truck and the guy that got almost killed turned a tree. I'm not doing that for if I'm going to do a brake system evaluation and inspection I'm gonna check in bad boys. I don't do it with powertrain. I don't do it with stuff like that. But if I can clearly see there's a leak, I will absolutely go to him and say, Hey, I know that this VTEC solenoid will cause this concern. We probably should take care of that first. I can see it dripping. Let's deal with that first and then we'll come back and recheck. Right? And then it goes into my quality control process upon completion. Because it runs for 10 minutes on top of a piece of cardboard. Is it still still dripping?

David Roman 22:36
I guess my concern is a one. I'm trying to figure out what the hell it is you're doing. But I'm not doing one one and two. I like

Bill DeBoer 22:44
well, I could probably break it down for you. I mean, we have paid plans that people that hold them accountable to making the times to write so.

David Roman 22:54
Yeah. I don't believe in that.

Lucas Underwood 22:59
Outcome is either new Mike Allen was Is he the new Mike Allen?

David Roman 23:03
No Mike Allen's a whole different creature. Mike Allen is actively spreading his evilness all over Bilka he, you know, does this thing.

Lucas Underwood 23:14
Mike slithering all over him? Yeah, he's

David Roman 23:16
like, sliming all over. Everything's spreading junk every I don't, I don't want to. And I'm not trying to spy. I'm just giving you crap. But like, I don't want to get to that point. Okay, I don't want to say hey, your paychecks gonna be last because you didn't get your hours and I need because I think I don't need it to be 100% where you're at. I'm probably 70% of the way there 70 80% of the way there. But I think I can get to a higher number. I could probably squeeze out another. I know I can get another 20,000 a month out of what I'm doing right now. If I can just tweak it a hair in in my mind. From a pace standpoint, pace, okay. I think the pace that his guys work at is obscene. And I can't work at that pace. I don't want my guys working at that pace. Because I it's very much a reflection of me and I like I feel bad. I feel bad. I do. Like I'm I'm lazy. But you know what, like, I get my stuff that I need to get done done. They're lazy, but they get the stuff that they need to get stuff done. To me.

Lucas Underwood 24:44
How many hours a day does each tech bill?

David Roman 24:47
It depends. A day, man. We go by week there. Okay, average average 25

Bill DeBoer 24:57
That's what they do. That's what your texts do a week. yeah they're working 40 Right?

David Roman 25:05
Yeah, well, they're 40 they're not working 40 ish, too, because, you know, they get there when they get there.

Lucas Underwood 25:18
I don't know that I can tolerate. I really I mean, that would like, and here's the thing

David Roman 25:23
is you that's, that's the thing though you probably get there. You're like, he seems like you seem like a a hard worker. And you I've seen you, you're crazy. And so me though, like, I get there when I get there. And I work 40 ish hours a week and yeah, like there's a lot of time off and want to hang out. You know, doing whatever. Like I'm doing stuff I'm working, but I'm not working. And the shop I'm not doing shop stuff.

Lucas Underwood 25:50
I mean, what about the team though? Your team's there?

David Roman 25:54
Yeah, they're there.

Lucas Underwood 25:55
Are they not working?

David Roman 25:58
No, probably not as hard as I could.

Lucas Underwood 26:00
I mean, you make it sound like my guys are out here killing their shows. And they are they're really hard workers. I'm sure your team Yeah, I mean, boys, they put it down. They're hustlers. But they enjoy it. Right? Like we all love it.

Bill DeBoer 26:11
I mean, nobody's you know, we're not working people to death, either. I mean, that they're just doing their thing. I mean, they're not running around crazy like chickens with their heads cut off. They're just doing it just feel

David Roman 26:21
like they have

Bill DeBoer 26:22
to know they don't know.

David Roman 26:25
Guys, do you show up? I've seen your guys but I want to know what he's doing.

Lucas Underwood 26:29
I think you guys are sandbagging. And it's making you feel like

David Roman 26:32
two guys. Today we are and you can ask him. I do feel more like my guess and brag a little bit. A little bit.

Lucas Underwood 26:42
So what's the solution? What What would you tell David? What would you well, he's

David Roman 26:45
got to have a pay plan that no no no don't get into that I'm saying any I think that

Bill DeBoer 26:55
manage themselves with you know,

David Roman 26:57
now but I don't want to do it through pay. I don't I don't want to do through pay. I don't think that's about fatal sleaze

Bill DeBoer 27:03
trophies with.

David Roman 27:07
That might be a thing. Fifth place, trophy motivates them. Right. And what's that, if it motivates them? I think they the the reason that we end up having issues, I think, are almost always process related. Right. And so we will, the parts don't get there on time. Or we get the wrong part of the part didn't get ordered hashes all day long in our shop too. And, well, I think they use that as an excuse to then sandbag. So what I'm saying is like, part didn't show up, I'm gonna go hang up. It's like, well, hold on. Now. You could be doing something else. You could be doing something else. And in my mind, I'm like, Well, I'm not gonna push because they have one day. Like, what are we going to do now? The part didn't show up, push? Yeah, okay. Okay. It seems like that's not a thing in their world. Where you're like, we don't have a choice here. Like, I gotta turn this day. It's got to make X amount of dollars a day.

Lucas Underwood 28:05
For us. It's not even about the dollars. It's like when you are getting ready to spray sand everywhere. David, you're worrying about those

David Roman 28:11
weights and watch. Just be awesome. Do it we'll get mad and

Lucas Underwood 28:18
find all the sticky dog.

David Roman 28:23
Everywhere will know where it is at that point.

Lucas Underwood 28:27
David's dog peed on some of his stuff. Right below

David Roman 28:31
my dog. Not my dog. No, no, not my dog. The wife's dog. My father in law's dog. Worst dog ever. So dog person.

Bill DeBoer 28:42
I'm a dog person. Are you what do you do to piss off the dog?

David Roman 28:45
I didn't do anything. This is a stupid, stupid dog. Years of inbreeding have wondered what he did to piss the dog off. Years of inbreeding have resulted in this dog who just like you can tell. You can tell him like, Look, I've had a lot of dogs in my life. And I've had a lot of really smart dogs. And I've had dogs that did bad stuff. They knew they were being bad. And they gave you the load. And they knew they knew they knew this dog doesn't know this dog just like his eyes go different directions. He just stares at you and then he bumps into the wall and they sniff some piece on the wall because he hadn't been in that corner yet. And he goes about his day. He doesn't care he doesn't know

Lucas Underwood 29:32
you should probably try and hiring

David Roman 29:35
you should probably do comparing my text to the stupid dog I own You're awful.

Bill DeBoer 29:41
So the parts wrong what you guys are just gonna stand around do nothing for an hour waiting for next morning. So your their goals don't align with your goal.

David Roman 29:50
mind is blown. Like we were just hanging out to the bookshelves.

Lucas Underwood 29:57
It's gotta go out right? Like it's gotta go out The small shop, that's all that it can be. And so I think a lot of that though, is the morning planning. Right? So like for us the morning Planning says, If this doesn't show if this client doesn't show, if that part doesn't get there, here's your list, right? You got to go to the next. And the other thing. I don't know about you, I use workflow in shop where David doesn't use workflow in Shopware.

David Roman 30:20
So I Oh, what's this? I don't, little green buttons.

Lucas Underwood 30:23
Use us specifically told me you did not use workflow. I have

David Roman 30:27
since started working on the green buttons and ribbons are cool. Yeah, you can see.

Bill DeBoer 30:33
So we we have our own workflow board that we have inside the inner office. Why do you

David Roman 30:39
hate shop where I love shop where

Bill DeBoer 30:43
we have? No, I mean, we have the workflow board on a television out in the shop so the guys can see it there. But mainly for running strategy. The we have a workflow board with every car gets a tag and right, we're moving it through the system.

Lucas Underwood 31:01
That's how I do my keys.

David Roman 31:03
Progress board like that, too. But like, what what he's saying, though, and what I'm saying is like, you'll know, I've got these three cars assigned to that tech. And then you know, when it fills up to 16 hours, you're like, Okay, well, I guess he's not going to finish these cars today. Like, because it's unreasonable to think that that person is going to finish those. But

Lucas Underwood 31:24
I mean, I don't just load the I don't load it. In that sense. I load it in the sense that every job I need you to work on is in your list. Now I will take the other jobs off, right, and I will get my count, I will know hey, I want to see you through this. So they know hey, this first job I want to see out of that by 930. The second job. And we'll see after that by 11. This third job I want to see out of that by 12. Right. And we're talking about where we're going to be at certain times during the day first thing in the morning, our morning meeting includes that if we have a no show, if you don't have parts, if this happens down below, that is the next thing I want you on. If you can't go to that go to the nation. If you can't go to that go to the next one

David Roman 32:03
to production, though, if that happens to be the case. The part doesn't show it's the wrong part shows up late. Because sometimes we like we schedule it tight, like go ahead and get started. Part should not here by the time you're right. No,

Lucas Underwood 32:16
you don't. Man, that is I'm telling you that is number one big boo boo. Really, it doesn't get touched until that boogers there. And you can look at the part and say that's the right part. You do not touch a thing on that car. It's making probably do that change my life when I stopped doing that, that change my friggin life

Bill DeBoer 32:35
here just inviting it in. I mean, well, one of the things to all throw back to you. He said daily meetings. So what about are you doing daily meetings,

David Roman 32:44
we do a weekly meetings, which individual we do a weekly shop meeting and weekly one on one meetings. I don't do Oh, like a morning, it's when you get there. They're like, here's your keys. They know our keys is sitting there waiting, usually if I get there,

Bill DeBoer 33:01
so we just implemented this. Josh, our foreman and I went to a conference over the summer. And he brought it back to daily collision or daily huddle or whatever. And we implemented it. And it's been working wonders for us. I mean, we've had the weekly leadership meeting with just our leadership team. And now actually this quarter, we're breaking that down to where the front of house and the back of house are both having a meeting once a week to to make sure that everything's on track.

Lucas Underwood 33:28
That's that is that makes all the difference in the world that morning meeting did it bus Don't

David Roman 33:33
you have to

Bill DeBoer 33:35
get single, it's literally like a five minute meeting around the

Lucas Underwood 33:38
board has nothing to do.

Bill DeBoer 33:41
That irons out a lot of communication issues.

David Roman 33:43
I've got two different buildings. So I've got one tech who's in a completely different building. Now that would make it hard. Our weekly meetings will come together. Like we don't well, all we do is discuss numbers like hey, it's tire pressure season, so make sure you're filling up the tires. Don't forget, we're just little reminders like that. And then we discuss numbers. Hey, last week, we hit this number hours looking good. Hey, we'll make sure that we're doing this here. Clean up some of your inspections, but it's mostly 25 hours a week. 25 Yeah. 25 hours a week. Yeah. No. What's wrong with 25 hours a week?

Bill DeBoer 34:21
It's part time.

David Roman 34:23
Yeah, right. Well, they're 40.

Lucas Underwood 34:26
Yeah, they're marked on employees. I guess.

David Roman 34:28
They they turn the built out 20 fiber. That's that's sort of the problem, though. It's not so I was asking about the the

Bill DeBoer 34:35
there's a lot of shops that run that way too. There's more than one like that then yeah, either way. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong,

David Roman 34:41
why I go, I base my I base a lot of what I do off of like Bob Greenwoods, we should be at 70% productivity. So the number then becomes like, hey, we need to hit 30 between 30 and 35 hours a week. That's going to be our our like, look at 30 hours a week. You will Let me pull up in two boats. One, I'll have a leg in the on each boat pulling on. I'm not, and we're not that far away either. So what I'm saying like, it's just a small tweaks that those extra five hours per technician will push me into that 20,000 A month range there were neck and neck with with Princess over here. So that's the goal. And I am putting almost no effort into where he is going to kill himself working as hard as he does, because I'm just it's a it's a lazy 25 hours a week. The pace is just way slower. Not I'm not disparaging anybody doing absolutely anything. I am telling you that if I lose the guy next week, not that I don't love my all my staff to death, I love them just in my heart. But if I lose a guy next week, I don't feel it. There's nobody that is a

Lucas Underwood 36:06
there's nobody that is productive enough to make that big of a difference to the organization. Exactly.

David Roman 36:13
And you're laughing, but I'm 100% How I've, I've put my business around when you're there is nobody in that is critical enough to my business that if I lose them tomorrow, it'll hurt a little bit. It'll hurt a little bit. But

Lucas Underwood 36:29
that sounds like I feel fear mindset though. It sounds like you're embracing your business. Absolutely

David Roman 36:33
not. It is 100% pragmatism, the the the average, the average employee will stay in the business, what? 2.3 years, something like that. Right? Okay. So think about the turnover. And if you've had an Wofford my employer for 1015 years, like Okay, congratulations, it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much. And you don't think that somebody else is out there actively recruiting your child Foreman is being actively recruited by absolutely everybody around you. And to put your blinders up and think that that's not happening. Absolutely insane. The guy that we were talking about this morning, if he doesn't think if that shop owner doesn't think that the minute he loses that employee, his entire business comes to a screeching halt.

Lucas Underwood 37:16
What did you think about that? That pushed him a Cybersmart?

Bill DeBoer 37:20
No, I didn't see we were driving in.

David Roman 37:22
He was busy. Telling the

Bill DeBoer 37:25
crazy numbers of three and a half before we move on are you doing but the to your point, though, like it is super critical when you're a small shop like us, like if I have a TECHO Alec, we Cory was out two days this week sick? Yeah. That's a third of our capacity. And God Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah. So the, the pieces where

David Roman 37:43
I'm like, where I'm afraid to get to it is a little bit of fear. Because Because like you're saying, it's not even that. It's like, yeah, you're losing a third of your capacity. But you still have that front staff that you're paying for that is not turning base. Well, they pay for themselves, well, like the front staff, their their commission paid. So when

Lucas Underwood 38:06
in for me, him being out is very much the ripple in the pond. Right? Because it's not just that day that it affects, right. So ripples the whole week goes haywire, more clients are upset. So now the front counter has got to deal with more mass and it's just all a crazy.

Bill DeBoer 38:25
There's so much interdependency. It's really nice. I mean, we really come I mean, we got a really good solid team. I mean, they all gel, everybody knows that everybody's paying is related on everybody doing what they're supposed to do. And so yeah, everybody's accountable to everybody. And you know, it just happens. I don't know I can't or they leave with you know, either I help them leave or they self select that. Right. So

Lucas Underwood 38:48
maybe David's texts, come spend a week with you and you know,

David Roman 38:54
they'll come back and be like, No.

Lucas Underwood 38:58
Work Jersey No way. Tell him about to tell him about the post retirement. So he's not completely

David Roman 39:05
still we talking about? Oh, the beers that dude. The 39.85 hours. Okay, so the guy flag is 39.85 hours. And this owner thought he was going to be you know, Magnum mag helped me out here. You know, Matt

Lucas Underwood 39:31
this is gonna be the real clip from this entire podcast.

Bill DeBoer 39:37
Google, yeah. synonyms?

David Roman 39:40
No, no. Well, yeah, maybe.

Lucas Underwood 39:50
monogamous.

David Roman 39:56
He thought he was going to be turned on media. He thought he was gonna be magnanimous about it, and tell and tell him, I'm going to at least that's how it came up, that he was gonna he was like, go ahead and put you down or self down for 40. So you can hit the 40 hour week bonus. And the guy didn't. And he goes, Hey, what happened here? I told you to round up to 40. I don't know how you ended up with a point. 5.05 do do that.

Lucas Underwood 40:23
But it shows on the sheet but he didn't I rounded up

David Roman 40:28
how you're not fixing that. It's just the way it calculates. I'm OCD about that. Oh, well, okay, what I'm saying like, in my hours, if I ended up with anything past the temp, I go bananas, like, hey, we didn't round. Because you know, then chopper goes 1.3. It bumps it up. But I'll show like 1.67 It's like, okay, that's 1.7 Don't leave it at 1.67 Because I will go bananas anyway. So that I focus on the wrong things, by the way, there. He goes, Hey, why didn't you round up to 40? And he goes, like, bomb isn't that big a deal to me. It's like, whatever. And so his reaction wasn't okay. He didn't feel like he earned it. So he didn't fully earn it because technically, he didn't write in turn that extra 2.15 hours, therefore, and no, no, he got upset. He's like, I think my bases, I think I'm paying his base, or his base is a little too high. I think I'm paying them too much as a base salary. Because he didn't care about that extra bonus.

Bill DeBoer 41:28
Or it can be not money motivated to write? Yeah.

David Roman 41:31
He doesn't understand that. That wasn't that people are explaining to him. There are people that care about things other than money. Yeah. Remember that when you're laughing at me about my point to five hours? 25 hours

Lucas Underwood 41:44
a week? No, I'm not. Listen, I don't have a problem with you being at 25 hours like you do. i It's not that I have. It's just that I don't think I could talk. I couldn't learn to pay the bills. What it's hard to pay the bills, but it makes more for like,

David Roman 42:00
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, why do you say that?

Bill DeBoer 42:04
Why didn't I shop? Yeah, well, you so

David Roman 42:06
you run a parts person to service advisors yourself? Okay. I don't I have one guy. I have a Mexican. And that Mexican does a fantastic job. And then I fill in one until I get bored with it. And I go do something else. And I leave the rest. Have

Lucas Underwood 42:28
you ever heard of a seagull manager? Yeah.

David Roman 42:31
There it is not that. Thank you very much. That is not at all. I come in and supplement supplemental. Because I asked him I'm like, what do you need help with? He's like, Well, I need to do these three estimates. Can you clean up this inspection? Can you write something up for this here? What do you how do you want me to call this customer? Like, what do you want me to tell him about this particular this time? Because I'm more technical knowledge than he does. So sometimes the technical terms like he gets a little tripped up. He tries to explain them in layman's terms, but like, I prefer them to be accurate. 100% He thinks he's been accurate, but it's like, ah, that's not exactly right. For example, we don't say warped because rotors don't warp. Did you know that? I've always called them worked. See,

Lucas Underwood 43:22
none is a common fault that they do. But they don't go out around that they have some lateral run out excessive lateral run out parallelism issues, excessive variations and did not know this Jim CONUS. I think he's the one who taught me this, that a lot of the issues come down to brake pad material depositing on the rotor itself. And that's one of the reasons that you feel it worse as it begins to heat up. Did not know that.

David Roman 43:52
So cheap brake pads will also add to excessive vibration when pulsation. Yeah, I have a Hyundai. I think we're on our second set of we did the brake job initially. She came back in. We did I think Rudy, we redid like rear rotors or something like that. And she just came back in and we did a four wheel brake job on my dime. Because there was it was there were there were warped rotors. But I'm like, it's just this one car. It's not like I'm seeing a trend here. Like this. Just this one car.

Lucas Underwood 44:28
We see a lot of them because they get them hot. Yeah. That makes Yeah, they'll come back. There'll be just I mean, dude, you can't even describe the color purple these things. Yeah. And like the pad will be completely glazed over. Yeah. And so it can be two trips. And and with that you do your warranty? Well, we do. We'll ask them Hey, please make sure you down here when you go down the mountain because what they do is they ride them, right? They start down the mountain, they'll keep their foot on it. And they don't realize that they're just keeping very light pressure and it's still building heat and So you know, you go down through there at 60 mile an hour and you keep your foot on it just ever so slightly, there's enough of a downward grade that is going to keep pushing you all the way to the bottom, it's 20 miles. And so you're, you know, you're running 60 mile an hour down through there and, and you're sitting on the brakes, and then somebody pulls out in front of you, or somebody slows down in front of you, and you stand on them pretty hard. They're already hot, you get them really hot. Yeah, and next thing you know,

David Roman 45:25
but if they live on the mountain, you would think they would know.

Lucas Underwood 45:28
But you got to remember, we live in a college town. So we end up with a lot of college students. And we end up with a lot of folks that move in that have never experienced that. You know, and so, I just

David Roman 45:38
thought my point is at 25 hours, we do we do fine. Okay, we don't have we don't have the expense. Usually the expenses if they get a little heavy, it's because I'm buying toys. Like an eight ounce machine nowadays. That's another 60.

Bill DeBoer 45:56
But yeah, now we're waiting to see how that all plays out.

Lucas Underwood 46:00
What What do you mean?

David Roman 46:02
Oh, dear, you're not listening to the podcast. This is what happens when you just listen to one podcast, not all of them.

Bill DeBoer 46:10
To be honest, I've been on books lately, so I'm a little behind them on podcast.

Lucas Underwood 46:14
You're a terrible. I mean, you're just absolutely terrible. We want your right now, what's that

Bill DeBoer 46:22
we just don't get any calls for right now. I mean, we got the windshield.

Lucas Underwood 46:27
We figured this out. Right. And so that's why I that's a big reason that I set the shop up for. And so we began to have conversations with people who were in the know, we were in

David Roman 46:40
the same, like, there was right before eti 2021. We went to eti. And my, my whole thing was an all go to dynamic. And you know, I don't believe that. Well, and that was my mindset because it and I got it from Robert Morton dirtbag who decided to tell me, Hey, back in the day use that the spend all this time calibrating these stupid sensors on these German cars, because that's what he works on. This is a Euro tech, or euro shop. And he's, he's like, Yeah, but now, like, they would end up doing a revision or two, and then it's just plug and play. And then you just install it. Now the door goes, he goes, it also probably be that they'll just eventually move to more and more dynamic and like less need for the whole contraption and this that. And then we show up for ATI, and everybody goes, no, that's not how it's gonna be. In fact, we're gonna do all static, we're gonna go more static. Really? Yeah, there's less variation, less need for driving for two hours to get it to calibrate. You can't account for roads and construction and all this other stuff. There's so many variables when you're doing dynamic, that a static calibration can be done reliably, with the, when properly done can be done reliably. And you'll know what has been pushed into the module. And that's going to be faster, easier, and more controllable than to try to push the all dynamic, like, oh, okay, well, that's kind of crappy. So now we have to do something about that. And then we started hearing about all of the restrictions. And hey, they can't have sunlight. And it'll, it'll say it's calibrated. It's not really calibrated. It's

Lucas Underwood 48:27
not self diagnosing. So you never know it's not counted. You have no idea. And I think the big thing was is, as we started to have more of those conversations, it became very clear that the cars we were already working on require calibration. And so when we started looking and began to know where to look and service information, found the majority of the cars that were coming through the shop, were supposed to be calibrated if we weren't calibrating them after an alignment if we weren't calibrating them after specific services, then the car wasn't safe and nobody knew it.

David Roman 49:03
Yeah, that that was became a it became apparent that that was the reality. And we just weren't checking a we were just talking to we were talking to Ben Johnson from Mitchell one and he was saying yeah, we started putting we saw the need to start attaching notices to any kind of repair that would possibly then require an A das calibration things like radiator, radiator installations, suspension work alignments. You think you don't need to but it turns out like it's in there, but the problem is like, who checks for service information when doing an alignment? Like you roll the car? You hope the alignment machine tells you that my John bean says check for a das calibration assess it like but it says that on every car that comes in so that oh seven Silverado that you don't alignment on, says check out again. Right, because you just start ignoring it, but you have no idea. And so, yeah. And then mobile techs are,

Lucas Underwood 50:09
they're not doing a good job. And they try and right? They can't. And so, you know, the adapt, Chris Chesney hinted at the fact that, hey, there have been legal cases already. Right? It's coming. And they know that it's a thing. So that was the big reason for me saying, Hey, I'm gonna go ahead and plan for this in the new shop.

Bill DeBoer 50:32
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely not ruling it out. But right now, I mean, it's just not in our wheelhouse, you know, talking about staying in our lane, and what I mean, three and a half days, we just

Lucas Underwood 50:41
don't know. Right. And that was one of the reasons that we made the call and going ahead and moving forward to the shop. Right, that was coming out of COVID. And it's been, as a matter of fact, you can ask David, when I went through the whole deal with the bank, we were here last year, it has been it is exactly 365 days when I get home on Monday, that I'm asking for my final inspection that we started actually building the shop. And so it's been one year, and it was, it was through these events that I kind of started picking up like, Hey, I'm not gonna be able. My business is not sustainable in three bays. In 234 years, right? It's just not sustainable anymore.

Bill DeBoer 51:25
He's got three Oh, he's got three and a half. We're going to six in the new building. Yeah, I mean, you're not gonna have any space for $1. So, yeah, our alignment, they should provide us enough.

Lucas Underwood 51:37
Are you going in ground? Yeah, we're gonna go flush

Bill DeBoer 51:39
them out. Yeah, it'll roll forward. And yeah, okay. We're making? Yeah,

Lucas Underwood 51:44
there's trade offs, right. Yeah.

Bill DeBoer 51:46
So the, but I agree. I mean, when we're trying to put this we're on a really small lot. You know, New Jersey, real estate's expensive is crazy, right. So it was, it was quite the negotiation to get that six bays in there versus the four that you know, if we went by the letter, like, but like a 10, by 10, shed on the lot, you know, right. All right. So

Lucas Underwood 52:07
what do you do? How did you navigate that? A

Bill DeBoer 52:09
lot of it was, believe it or not, was more with my engineer than anything else. My engineers, like, this isn't gonna work. We can't get it to make I'm like, well, let's, let's go to the town and have them tell us that before we decide, you know, right. But I for base, I probably wouldn't be building that building. I'd be right in a coffee shop in there. So yeah, definitely. It's not worth

Lucas Underwood 52:31
it. It's crazy. And so we'd built things before, right? Like we'd been building houses, but we never, I don't think any of us ever recognized. To what degree the local restrictions had changed. Right? And it was things like 15 foot vegetative buffers from myself. From myself, Yes. From yourself. Okay, but that's my parking lot. Yes. But you don't want to be able to see the cars from inside the shop. But there's cars everywhere, right? Well, you need a 15 foot vegetative buffer between the side of your driveway into the shop, and up the drive. So it'll block the parking lot. There's 275 feet of Creek and vegetation between us and the road. You don't want to see right, but we need that on your property. What the hell are you talking about?

David Roman 53:32
See, this is what happened to get involved in your local government. This is entirely your fault. You should have been running for city council. So you can navigate all of this stupidity. And we're like, we're not going to do that. I'm gonna go ahead and vote down. This down. Did you

Lucas Underwood 53:46
feel like when you when you started the process? Did you feel like they did not want development and building in your area? Did it feel that way? To you?

Bill DeBoer 53:53
No, not at all. You gotta remember, like, you know, we've been in this town for 37 years. So good working relationships, they know that type of business and we run, you know, we're not collecting cars. I mean, it's good clean business. Right? You know, so when we approached the town with it, and they were pretty much on board with all of it. I mean, they had some minor things like, you know, we're on a state highway, so we have a driveway access that came around to the back, right. And they were concerned about that. So we deleted a section out of there. So we there's a ADA handicap spot that you can come and pull into up front, right, that's the only access from that side. So everything else has to come down the side road but I mean really nothing too crazy just yet. So we just got through land use I'm going to be drawn building permits here soon. Very cool. You're going to be your own GC. Yeah, I'm going to GC and myself. Sorry about for you. I did my house so I get some experience in it. You know, a lot of contractors are all customers and you gotta have good Yeah, well, you know, it's the biggest Yeah,

Lucas Underwood 54:58
the subs or the subs or The key Yeah, right, the subs are the key. I think if there's anything I've learned about that I've only got a couple subs that are just like,

Bill DeBoer 55:06
and I reached out to the just the other day, you know, because we're getting into. So I'm putting up a Morton building a steel building, and they're doing the architectural design and off stamp plans from them for that. But it's not going to have the mechanical, the electrical and the plumbing on it. So I got to get a little bit more into detail with that. So I just called up the construction official in town. And, you know, I had a very good conversation told them what my plans were, and you know, I'm just trying to stay in compliance and do the right thing here. So I mean, it gave me some good guidance and sent me in the path where, you know, I knew what he says, and what else is he gonna say when? Right? That's exactly right. Yeah. So let him tell me versatile, get fired,

David Roman 55:44
and somebody else will come in, and that guy won't like you. Yeah.

Lucas Underwood 55:47
Did you hear that? Did you hear the story about the electrical panel on my new shop? No. Yeah. So they, they build it to code, right? The because it's a 600 amp

Bill DeBoer 55:56
three phase guy in the back of the shop. And we're looking at putting three phase into also the

Lucas Underwood 56:00
the first inspector comes in, we did not call for an electrical inspection. And the the so the metal building it where we're at does not require a physical inspection, okay. It just doesn't fall underneath those conventional inspection guidelines. And as such, it really didn't need an electrical inspection until finally it doesn't have an electrical roof. And on the big shop space, it's only on the office space. We called for a framing roof in and the inspector showed up and decided he was going to do an electrical roof and on the whole building. Now, had he not done that, it would have saved me $7,000. Long story short, he knew I was in trouble, right? Because there's no wires pulled in any of the panels at this point. And he's going from panel to panel with a meter to check and make sure there's no power in the panel. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting. So he goes back to the back, and he points out that you need three separate disconnections, we've got three panels in the shop, you need three separate disconnects, or one 600 amp disconnect, in one spot at a certain height outside behind the building. And we said, okay, the electrician says, I've never heard of that, like, each of the panels has its own disconnect. We've got a primary disconnect in the back. Why do we need another? Like? Why do you need three places to turn everything off? That makes no sense? And he says, No, it's the new electrical code. And so I was okay with all of this. I was okay with the $7,000. I just wanted the building done until the new inspector showed up and said, Man, I don't I don't know why I told you that. But I don't think that's gonna pass code. And I was like, do what? And he's like, I'm really sorry. Like, I don't know what to tell you. There's not really anywhere for recourse or anything like that. And we were like, You're joking, right?

David Roman 58:00
So all that to look forward to and yeah,

Lucas Underwood 58:03
so we go around and around. And eventually he's like, man, he's like, Hey, what, let's just, it'll be okay. You're compliant with new codes? Yeah.

Bill DeBoer 58:11
Yeah, this guy, this guy actually told me he's like, you know, if you get your building permit in, within the next three months, you'll be grandfathered into the old code. So

Lucas Underwood 58:20
right. There you go. You better get that bad boy. Yeah.

Bill DeBoer 58:24
I'm hoping to be done quick. Pretty quick. So that's awesome, man. That's fantastic.

Lucas Underwood 58:27
But Well, cool. Thank you for being here. Absolutely.

David Roman 58:32
It's been on the weekend, anything figured out?

Lucas Underwood 58:35
Your shop? So I mean, that's not what I meant to say. I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm just kidding. Hey, how did you? This is your first time being here?

Bill DeBoer 58:42
Yeah. First time I tools started from being online and seeing the posts and stuff like that.

David Roman 58:49
We've talked about your most credit, you can go ahead and do with credit. It's fine. We've

Bill DeBoer 58:53
been trying to come to the past,

Lucas Underwood 58:56
though, you know? Well, so I know. It's a smaller event.

Bill DeBoer 59:02
I don't even but for me to bring the whole team. It's a lot easier. You know, it's a region. It was an hour drive this morning. There was two teammates that couldn't make it, though. I mean, they're busy with kids stuff this weekend. You know, it's it's a tough time a year to get away from all that. But

Lucas Underwood 59:17
right. I mean, I think it's growing. And I think he's going to I think it's exciting. And I've got some people that are involved that want to really see this go to the next level.

Bill DeBoer 59:26
That's a great some good people. Great space here. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I mean, how far was it from Allentown to get here? I wasn't I

David Roman 59:33
won't. Yeah. 4550 Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't gonna try.

Lucas Underwood 59:38
I was trying to make it sound better because you know, I do read 100 The whole way but

Bill DeBoer 59:44
but I mean, like, the Poconos the proximity in New York City. I mean, it's yeah, there's a ton of shops within that space. Oh, yeah.

Lucas Underwood 59:51
It's beautiful. You can bring your family Yep, there's a waterpark so they have things to do. There's plenty of space This show could grow to the size of A Ste or vision are one of the other regional chalets, the

David Roman 1:00:03
this space was a whole vision type, this space

Lucas Underwood 1:00:07
is way bigger than the AC space, it's pretty close to the vision space, if you go down and walk down all the way around, you've probably got as much space as you've got it. So,

Bill DeBoer 1:00:19
but you know, good classes. I mean, I definitely would recommend that to anybody in the area. Awesome. Book their way in here.

David Roman 1:00:26
So now I gotta hire a parts person, a second service advisor.

Lucas Underwood 1:00:29
I think you can do everything you want to do with a second service advisor. Yeah, really? Yeah, if you take the load off of 411 is running himself to Dan,

David Roman 1:00:38
I thought about moving my grumpy tech into a part slash expediter.

Lucas Underwood 1:00:44
You're, you're grumpy tech hates everyone. Yeah. And everything. Not everything. Most every

David Roman 1:00:53
but he's got a lot of technical, like knowledge experience doesn't make

Lucas Underwood 1:00:57
you good at at being the parts person in the expediter in the shop. We're not, it just does not necessarily equate it doesn't mean he wouldn't be. But it doesn't necessarily equate to him being good at that job

David Roman 1:01:09
knowing knowing that that job takes these three gaskets that get missed. And you didn't pull the past service.

Bill DeBoer 1:01:21
So we have helpful well, so you know what we'll do in our shop. And maybe this leads for some of that. But what I'm hearing is, so our Tech's write it up, they send it up to parts person, they write it up, they send it back to the tech for review, right, make sure that they get the right time on it, the right part. So you the seer scenario you're talking about, it would fall back on the tech if they don't get the right parts. Because they're going to sign off on that work order and then send it up to the service,

David Roman 1:01:46
turning the hours that they're turning and writing the tickets.

Bill DeBoer 1:01:50
They're not writing the tickets, they wrote the inspection, they're reviewing the ticket to make sure that the right parts are on there. Yeah, so like the missing O rings and stuff. Like if that happens, they get nobody to blame but themselves.

David Roman 1:02:03
Okay, I guess the the issue I would have, so we'll do that with a, let's say we're doing some kind of gasket on a on an outie. Okay, so that that's going to take this pipe that pipe, these three, you know, whatever. And so every single one of those pipes has a stupid ring on it needs to be replaced. And so what we'll do is send it to the tech, we won't take that we have all your work actually likes doing it for some reason. And so he'll he'll pull up the the parts list, he'll be on part Sucre, seven zap, and he'll be like, tick, tick, tick tick. He was all these three gaskets all need to go, then you really add to the taking the Senate back. We don't do that on every ticket. And I think the sometimes it's not like the more intricate technical stuff. It's things like the plenum gasket, it's best on spark plugs, right? You know, just stupid stuff like that. But the text know that the text tool, those Doc's do Yeah, in some of them, they'll they'll add it as a private note and say, Hey, make sure I get a plan. We ask it, make sure you get thrown by gasket and make sure you get your to guess whatever, right? My mind, if I stick them back there, stick them in an office and say, Hey, inspection is going to come in, I need to clean them up. Make sure they're there, like good technical notes are in there. You look so tired. I feel so bad for you. I'm not tired. You should have been written in the ribeye to get too much sugar. I know. And I feel like I can do it. Little by it's no thank you. It's closed. He didn't like it or anything. Anyway. I just feel like if we stick them in an office back there, and we tell them, hey, I need to clean up the inspections, I need to write up the estimates. The majority of all I need to make sure you get the parts ordered. Make sure the parts come in make sure you check them to see if they're flipping correct me the guy's got 20 years experience like he's probably done that job six times you know. And then make sure you get the expedite the parts out to the wood

Lucas Underwood 1:04:08
that you're talking about two different jobs right we talked about the the tech moving to the owner role. And we talked about how they're not the same job and you have to learn a new role. You have a you have to make sure he understands and is willing to learn the new role and be you don't know that it is a different task. It's a different skill set. So what makes him a good technician is not going to make him a good parts person.

David Roman 1:04:34
I understand that. The I think a technical knowledge and ability will help because he's going to be able to go there's no way that car is going to do that jobs can be done in 2.7 That's 4.2 all day long. So you'll wear my my service advisor now or even me not having done that job ever. And my service advisor now will just that's overtime says plus a markup, you know, 30% add on, and then took. And then off it goes. If he doesn't know, he asks me, hey, does 1.1 sound good on that?

Bill DeBoer 1:05:12
But that's where you run into the problems where he could be losing time to write. So

David Roman 1:05:17
I just feel like I'm probably losing time in there.

Bill DeBoer 1:05:21
Right. So like, when when it goes back to the tax, it's on them to make sure that the right times on it too, right. Yeah, absolutely. They're paying Absolutely. Off of that. So what's, I mean, if they're reviewing it, and they're, they're not tied to that. They're like, you're if they're billing the customer, two and a half hours or four, you know?

David Roman 1:05:39
Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. But from a, the, the only the only pushback I'll give you is that we have, we have very specific goals, right. And we do profit sharing in the shop. And once we hit certain numbers, like they start to see bigger chunks deposited into their retirement accounts, we have a little bit more flexibility to do things like take off to ASCE the big goal was we really wanted to STX we just could not make it. So when we finish December, and January, February was good. January was not good. Anyway, we just we could not swing the 25,000 nozzles gonna cost for us to STX. But I mean, it cost me 15 To go to ASD or, you know, that got paid. It was what I rent, right? And so in things like, we want an XP 400 in the shop, my tech ones that XP 400 We buy stuff like that. It's like my tech wanted TIG welder. Bottom article. He owns a TIG welder, by the way, no, you run a parts person,

Lucas Underwood 1:06:49
I don't run a parts question. Now that he's got 18 people though it works on the front desk. That being said, I do have someone who's going to take the parts role, we've got quality control. So I've got somebody that does quality control. And then they actually Washington get done, like Quan does all that. And so when we get done

David Roman 1:07:10
you guys, you guys are jerks is what you're doing. Because I am either working on an underpinning them, or both?

Lucas Underwood 1:07:20
Well, so you know, we've got somebody that's going to come on as a parts person. And and his, it's kind of cool, because I'll quit anyway, I put a mezzanine up, right. And so he'll be able to sit at the top of the mezzanine and he can see all the bays from the shop, he can see the old quantities, everything in the totes the whole nine yards from where he's at. And so I want to have a parts person, I've got two advisors, and then I've got myself and so I kind of take the advisor role when it gets into something complex and handle that obviously, we do the podcast and we do all the other stuff. But really I take the the owner role to advisors, one parts person, one quality control person once we move, not going to bring them on yet. And like I said, when we move, we'll have four tags, I like to bring on to more GS tags to handle the old services and stuff like that. And for right now I'm going to leave those other bays open and just let them float for right now until we kind of get a feel and know what our workflows like and where do we have the most capacity. The GS position allows me to say yes to a lot more people because we get a lot of maintenance request. So if we're saying yes to the maintenance request, right, it provides more opportunity as we move so that's my

David Roman 1:08:30
I think that maybe, maybe I'll take the risk of bringing in an extra person to help with parts and service advising in that 25 will be the 30 I really I'm defending my textbooks I don't think it's my texts that are holding us back I think it's very I tell them I told myself this all the time. It is very much the processes we have in place

Lucas Underwood 1:08:56
the only thing holding you back is the owner the guy's real shitbag salutes not behind the wheel that's exactly right. I mean seriously like I've told you over and over again you're working on too hard like he can't get everything done he's gonna start drama Saul's

Bill DeBoer 1:09:13
well, but if you get one and assistant with the parts I mean you probably would catch a lot more parts errors to write your unboxing I'm looking I'm making sure the numbers match the tickets and we don't

David Roman 1:09:23
yeah, we just all that stuff do not have time to do that and things like oh, that one part didn't get ordered. We missed it it got it was in progress and didn't pop up on the on the list of parts order and oh crap we missed it. never showed up. Can't check it off the list. Okay, that

Lucas Underwood 1:09:42
says in the workflow box parts needed. I know right? Imagine that. If you use the software to its capacity.

David Roman 1:09:47
Hold on, hold on. Am I missing this feature? What are you talking about? Look right

Lucas Underwood 1:09:51
here. I just want you to see this. Hang on. Let me show you. It's very easy to see if you go right here to Shopware Okay, click Login And then you go in here and you log into your account. And then you click workflow right here, you see right here where it says ordered in progress. And you notice how there's nothing on my screen that says needed? Right? It's because if it needed parts, we already ordered it. If it says needed right there, it means that we had

David Roman 1:10:19
to hold on hold on. But that's not the issue. The issue is that sometimes there's a part that's in progress, and go to order parts right now go to our parts, pull up, Rando ticket.

Lucas Underwood 1:10:31
You want me go? Oh, you want me to pull up just a

David Roman 1:10:33
random just a random ticket and try to order parts. And sometimes, if something didn't get received, or the quantity on hand is like, I don't keep inventory, period. But we don't keep inventory track of inventory and chocolate. Let's see us on the bottom there on progress. Okay, for whatever reason, right? You had a set of spark plugs, you ordered four spark plugs. Customer didn't need it. Customer declined the work, whatever, right? You end up sending the spark plugs back to the vendor in inventory. Shopper seal sees that you have four spark plugs, dear, we create a turn. Yeah. Okay, let's do the return doesn't get created. In an expedited fashion. Yeah. And then the very next car takes the same sparkplugs you'll think you got them in stock. I think you have them in stock. And so you order everything that's on the list, the parts get all ordered on the on

Lucas Underwood 1:11:28
the spark, let me let me give you let me give you a hint. If you didn't start on the car, until you knew you had all the parts. And you had a parts person or another C, CSR slash advisor that you go and then all the parts and say everything for this is here. Okay, we can move it from waiting on parts to

David Roman 1:11:48
I'm just showing you that I must admit.

Lucas Underwood 1:11:50
You see this rested? If you if you ever wonder why one day when I lose my mind what happened? Now you know,

David Roman 1:11:59
it was it is overworking this guy's and working himself up to death.

Lucas Underwood 1:12:03
We got to we got to revisit this. I want to have another one of these repair shops done. When David David has

David Roman 1:12:09
hired a second person. Yeah, I'm curious to see what happens. I never I've hired the extra technicians. And it's always worked itself out. And we always end up with more gross revenue. And you're always like, you're a little bit afraid is like, well, I'm about to commit, you know, X amount of dollars, that's always a chunk of money, um, salary. So it's the if the works, it's not a it's like, Oh, if the works not there, you don't get paid. If you don't hustle, you know, the salary is going to be there. We've got to make up for it. But the numbers have always grown like we've always like had a pop in sales, we've always had like, workflows quicker, we can start pulling in more cars, we can sell. Like the biggest thing with the last Tech, I hired my Aaro because we were able to slow down our process, the 300% rule got a little bit more 300% ish. It wasn't 225% it was very much 300%. My ARR grew by quite a bit, quite a bit. And so we're killing it this year. Our Aaro is creeping towards 1000 I'd like to get it to Lucas numbers one day, next year. But you know, it's always worked itself out. I can justify the cost like yeah, you can see the minute I hired that person, pop and sales. I don't know, in my mind where you're like, oh, they all pay. You know, they don't cost me anything right. They pay for themselves. That's always been true for technician. I find it hard to justify for back staff.

Bill DeBoer 1:13:42
Or what I mean what what would it What would you figure you have to pay somebody for that role? I don't know. Probably grand a month, four grand a month? No? Yeah, probably probably. Six 672, grand,

David Roman 1:13:54
six loaded. Six loaded so it'd be like 5550 55,000 a year. For me to get a quality person if I pay him anything less I'm going to end up getting a commercial manager person that's going to quit on me and then come back and then grovel at my feet to stay does he listen to this? Oh geez man. I'm sorry. Feel bad. So just do the math. Don't quit on him next time you dirtbag.

Lucas Underwood 1:14:25
Again, you see what I put up? Yeah.

David Roman 1:14:28
I'm defending you here. no justification for it.

Bill DeBoer 1:14:33
Five grand a year or five grand a month. Just work that backwards and

Lucas Underwood 1:14:38
it works out to a very small number. Yeah. Those top $5,000 works out to a very small number.

David Roman 1:14:45
Who do you think about 10 BoreSnake though? That's 10% dude. I mean, that's not for at the end of the year like you probably got

Bill DeBoer 1:14:53
five grand a course and none return parts.

David Roman 1:15:00
You know, personally down here this is ridiculous you brought it up first once free months free find all this I need to pay your salary find me $6,000 and returns dear

Lucas Underwood 1:15:13
listen hate fine. He'd find like empty bank deposit bags and like $100 bills

David Roman 1:15:18
stuffed on her stuff and that that makes its way back into living. Trust me we're running out of ink for that. But you know, yeah, I when I when I first heard things like what is whole this? I'm like see what it'll go back

Lucas Underwood 1:15:39
all right, sir.

Bill DeBoer 1:15:40
Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. It's been pleasure. Yes, sir.