3 Surprising Secrets to Keeping Your Best Technicians Long Term | SDR #277

Welcome everybody to the big show today we're going to talk about. You got the technicians, how do you retain them? And it's probably a little bit different than what you think, but some great insights for you that are proven and will work. Also, I have some astrology news.

Hot off the presses.

Astrology news.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I unveil Christian's birthday gift to me and much, much more coming up on this edition of of Service Drive Revolution.

So my birthday came and went. Ask me what I did for my birthday.

What did you do for your birthday?

Nothing. It was great.

So we have a tradition amongst our.

Don't talk about my birthday.

Well, that is one of the traditions. So one of the traditions is that we don't talk about Chris's birthday and sometimes he'll like try to alter space and time so that it doesn't happen, which he didn't do this year that I know of.

Oh, fly to Europe.

Yeah. But we also just for anybody who.

Doesn'T want to have their birthday, if you leave LA like around 11 at night, you land late the next day, you can completely miss you make a day.

So your birthday never actually happens. So hypothetically you're not older.

Yeah. So. So I wake up pretty early in the morning and he. One of the first things I did is I texted Chris Happy Birthday just on the side. And then for four hours I thought about whether or not I would participate in the tradition of. We usually like to do a happy birthday group text with the team. And I literally for four hours sat there and thought should I do this or should I not do this? Because I know how you feel about your birthday.

But you didn't, right?

Oh no, I did it.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. I never saw would be the 38 texts that said Happy Birthday Chris. If you go back through and look.

Got a little overwhelming.

Yeah. So tell me, tell me how the day was because I. I also tried not to bother you.

Yeah. So I was going to. So we had plans to go to cut for dinner but then the morning of I went to.

My favorite bookstore for a little while. Then. Then I just wanted to write some more. So I just wrote and ordered. I don't even know what we ordered. Takeout. But I really just wrote. I'm really trying to finish this book.

Isn't that about a way you would have picked to spend your birthday? Like that sounds about right.

Yeah.

You treated it like any other day.

So I wrote all day Friday. I wrote all day Saturday and part of Sunday.

You know, people think that like you can just take three months off and write a book, but you really end up writing it on the weekends and in the evenings and. Yeah, all that. But it's getting close. It's good. I'm excited. Well, there's no book like this. This has never happened before.

I've gotten to see. I haven't seen actual manuscripts, but even the outlines are fascinating, like in the approach to it and everything.

You know how I know the book's going to be successful?

Because you put your heart and soul into it.

No, that's not enough. I mean, there's a lot of. There's. There's a lot of.

There's a lot of people that have put.

There's a lot of kids that resemble you that want to be a point guard in the NBA.

They work really hard. Guess what?

They don't make it. Yeah, point taken.

That's great. So how do you know the book's.

Gonna be, you know, you don't have any idea how I know. Let's come back to that then.

Okay.

So you did give me a really cool Christmas gift. Oh, yeah. You said you would try it with me.

This is birthday gift, not Christmas gift.

People always ask what when they come here for an event or something. And they're always like, what is that? Tequila. I can't find it anywhere. Well, somehow Christian found one that I've never seen before that is reprosado. And it's great. It's a green bottle. It's absolutely gorgeous. If you're listening to this, I'm sorry, but if you pull it up, pull up this episode on YouTube, you can see the bottle. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's Dos Artes. This is my favorite tequila. And the only time Christian will drink is if I order Camus wine.

Yes. I'm number one.

Or he buys me a bottle and he wants to try it.

That's right.

So. But this is great. What, did you find this online or.

Oh, so I've got to find it in it. I've now got a Dosartes connection.

Is it up here Ramirez or whatever?

No, it's called Frank's. You ever been to Frank's before?

See these fancy ice cubes?

Yes.

We have fancy ice cubes in the library.

Beautiful.

Maybe I overpoured you there. I'm sorry.

That's about my annual limit.

Okay, so here's how I know that the book is going to be a hit. And I. I have this vibe.

Is.

Maybe you don't know her, but they do the. The cleaning here and at My house. Norma's daughter.

Okay.

Have you ever met her?

No.

So I guess she's into astrology in numbers. And she. For my birthday. I don't know how she knew it was my birthday, but she did my numbers and it said that it was gonna. It was gonna be exciting.

So the universe has decided for you.

The numbers, I think.

And I don't know that I believe in that stuff, but if it says good things are going to happen, I believe in it. So I believe in it.

Cheers to the new book.

Cheers.

That is really good, Christian. Even for a non drinker like yourself, it's pretty good.

I would say that for a non drinker, I'm pretty good at picking out booze.

You want to know what this little guy is? Were you here when I was in here doing this?

I was working. I was in.

Yeah, yeah. But you were here, right?

Yeah.

So we are. We are going to bottle our own run of tequila. The way that it works is.

There'S.

A.

Tequila brand that will on the side sell a bottle or a barrel. You buy the barrel and then they bottle it for you.

Okay.

And then we're gonna make boxes and put them in it.

But how many, how many bottles approximately is a barrel.

So because it. Okay, there's two variables to that. One is what do you want the alcohol content to be? So this little, this little sip I'm gonna give you right now, this is the one that, that we picked. This is 55% alcohol. So if you want it to be 42, you get about 250 bottles. But if you want it to stay at that, then it's going to be less.

It's 55%, 110 proof. Is that how the proof thing works?

Oh, I don't know. Okay, try that.

Okay.

So what they did is they pulled samples from different barrels and then I gotta pick. It's got a lot of vanilla in it. And think about cigars. Even though you don't smoke cigars, why smell wood? Yeah. So that was a little bit like.

A wine thing where you can see what the heck. There's stuff going on in here. Right.

So that, that was aged in a bourbon.

Barrel.

That's charred.

The burns on the front, I think.

Yeah. Middle. Because it's 55. Right.

Okay.

So that burn would come more to the middle if we made it a 42. Which I want it to be a 42.

Got it.

Love, Love the.

The wood. Whatever. So it reminds me of a bourbon actually.

It's very boutique. Right.

Wow.

That'S really Cool.

Yeah, there's no, there's no tequila out there that tastes like that.

Yeah.

And somebody who was into bourbon would love that. Yeah, it's on the fence.

Yep. It tastes more like bourbon than tequila. That's, that's really awesome.

I'm excited to have our own bottle because, like, oh, one thing too is like in this instant, right, like. So Derek has been in our coaching for how long?

More than two years, I think.

And so Derek Smith just made elite after two years, went through tons of ch, you know, changes, doubling down, lots of hard work. And would you describe it as an evolution?

Yeah, it was an evolution for sure that took longer to ramp up. And his goal from the day that I met him, from the day that you met him, was that he wanted to get to our elite in six months. And at the six month level.

It was really clear that in order for him to get to the elite goal, he was going to have to make some really, really tough decisions about personnel, the way that they did business, everything like that. And he struggled with that for a really, really long time. And it's funny how the, the thing that happened with Derek is the same that happens in the people that make it in 90 days is that they just decide that it's time and they just do it. And my favorite thing about this. So the thing that Derek that was keeping him out of the elite group was winning our fantasy football league, the top dog competition. So it took him 24 months to win his first one. And guess how long it took him to win his second one?

No time at all.

The exact he repeated it was like.

Which is really hard to do.

Yeah. And it was almost like once he unlocked a code and then all of a sudden success wasn't as far away as what he thought it was. And I think he would tell you that he would go back again and do all the stuff way faster and he would have the same results, just faster.

And if you are not familiar with our coaching group or with our program, we have an elite group, which there's certain. When you come into our coaching, there's certain benchmarks you have to hit the hardest. One of all the benchmarks to hit is winning our competition where your advisors compete against other advisors. Then there's a net to gross and a CSI element to it.

And he did it. So congratulations, Derek. We're really proud of you. We had our elite call this morning.

And it went really well.

It was really fun introducing him to everybody, but it's good. Okay, what's in the news Chris. Joan.

So this thing.

Super appropriate that we're about to do this while we. Hold on, let me have another sip of. To kill you.

So you would tell me the burns on the back on this, but I don't even feel a burn. It's just so smooth. So there was a bill passed in a place at the end of last year that they're going to require manufacturers to make vehicles starting in 2026 that can detect impaired drivers.

So the drunk driver detection technology that will take over your car is what this article says. But essentially, um, it's going to use tech, like camera technology and then just some. Some other technology that's going to detect like blood alcohol content in.

In the breath, I think. And then on the camera technology, what it's looking for is the eye bounce that, like when a police officer says, go left or right or whatever, I guess there's some sort of involuntary bounce that happens in your eye and. And the car would reserve the right to shut itself down.

So I wanted to ask what your thoughts were of that. I don't know if mine will be the existence.

You want me to tell you my.

My thoughts on that?

Yeah.

I don't know. Part of me thinks that it's an overreach, and then part of me is like, well, if it saves somebody's life, I guess. And then, I don't know, there's the element of if I'm tired, is it going to say that, you know, like, I don't know. I don't know enough about it, I guess, but it definitely is. Big brothers watching. Like, that's one thing about the Tesla that I think is hilarious is they can see it. They know everything you do. And they can see. They can see in the car, around the car, like.

Yeah. They have a ridiculous amount of data that shows that anytime there's an accident, it's 99.999, but they can see it.

They're watching you on the camera. So did you ever, when you were younger, like, let's say between the ages of 16 and 18, did you ever park a car somewhere with a lady friend? You can't do that anymore.

Not without a bunch of duct tape.

Do you know where all the cameras are?

You wouldn't.

They got the special Elon camera that you don't know where it is.

Right.

Could you imagine that?

I don't think kids do that anymore, but that was a. That was a.

Very favorable experience.

Where do they go then?

I don't know. I don't talk to kids about that.

Oh, yeah, it's probably not appropriate, I suppose, at the end of the day.

But we got him. How do we keep them? That's the subject.

It's a great subject.

We went out, we did all the work, we got him. How do we keep them?

And what, pray tell, are we talking about? Getting and keeping what? What.

We got who, we got what?

Technicians.

Technicians. The holy grail.

We were talking about that about this this morning on a call.

And the subject was brought up about how many baby boomers are like two years away from retiring in the shop.

Way more people than there are two years out of high school working in the shop.

Right.

It is tilted heavily.

So it's going to get harder, not easier.

That's right.

To find technicians and retain them.

Okay. So for in just like stream of consciousness, because it's not going to be one thing. There's no miracle pill here that you're going to do one thing and it's going to work out. It's going to be a bunch of things well executed and constantly evolving that's going to get you there. So embrace the complexity. Right.

And then convince everyone else that it's impossible.

Okay. This won't be the most important one, but it is one to think about is you got to have a pricing strategy and advisors in place and understand how to be able to have a profitable business and pay the most. I don't know how many times you do a strategy session and people still have an ELR under on our books.

More often than it ever should be.

And they're losing technicians and they, they can't imagine paying somebody 40 bucks an hour. But you have to have the.