How I Fix Broken Dealerships!

Welcome to the big show. I'm Chris Collins. Hoagie's here. Adam is here. Say hello, everybody. They can't hear you when you wave at them. Hello. Give them that good Illinois. What's going on today? We're going on today. We're going to talk about my experience learning how to fix service departments and parts departments. It's a, it's a fun story. It's, it's got lots of twists and turns, but there's some lessons in there for sure. I want to remind everybody that we're starting the second week in June here coming up. We're going to start doing Service Drive Revolution Live and we're starting the Live Academy, which you can purchase on our website. Anybody who wants to learn how to be a more effective leader, manager, you want to learn the financials, marketing, whatever it is, and want really to be in a community of other like-minded individuals. That is starting. So go to chriscollinsinc.com and sign up for that. And then that and much, much more coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

Hey!

So it's so funny. Adam sent Hoagie and I a text today.. And I thought it was like a business thing because we've been sending emails and texts back and forth about how new car sales are down, how manufacturers are struggling, shortage of technicians in the industry. And he sends this, uh, basically it's a text or a Facebook, which I can't, by the way, Adam, I don't look at Facebook. I don't have Facebook on my phone, so I can't ever see.

I don't either.

Well, you sent it.

I just found it.

Just found it. The guy who sent it doesn't have it. Doesn't make sense. But anyways, it's like something about the government being a mess, that sort of thing. And I'm thinking it's about tariffs, something. No, it's about the Bears moving to Indiana. His wife is a principal. It's not about the education system. It's not about trucks, cars. No, it's about the Bears moving to Indiana and what a mess the government is in Chicago. Basically, Chicago is the heart and soul of it because they have the most votes, right? It's like in Washington State, the farmers have no representation because most of the population is in Seattle and it can outvote everybody else combined.

That's why we call it, uh, Crook County, not Cook County.

Well, that's a whole nother— the corruption's a whole nother story.

I do empathize with you a little bit because if they move them to Indiana, um, probably the worst part of it— I can't believe they're going to do it— but they're going to call them the Indiana Cubs. Yeah, that's a step down from the Chicago Bears for sure.

Close to Indiana when you go along the lake, aren't they?

They're all close.

They're, uh, uh, Cubs are kind of north side and Sox are south side, right?

Sox are a lot closer to this, to Soldier Field, than, uh, the Cubs are. It's way easier to get to. But, uh, Sox are doing really good, but nobody talks about that either.

But you framed that text as it was like business related too, which was kind of funny.

Like, yeah, I had to go somewhere I could see Facebook.

You like that? Not that anybody cares or anything, but I'm just throwing it out there.

No, but truly business related. We had some really good questions from the last episode on financial statements that I think we should kind of circle back to. And I think one of them, Adam, you were talking about was how do I get the financial statement from You know, if I'm a service manager right now, uh, and I'm currently not getting the financial statements and I just get reports that I can run and stuff like that, but don't, don't see the statement, like how do I approach, uh, getting that information if I'm currently not? Yeah.

I mean, that was a big part of the story, right? Is like what a mystery financial statements are. Like nobody understands them. Nobody sees them. They're, they're this thing that means, has a lot of meaning. But is a mystery to everybody. So, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't know what, what you think, Hoagie, in your experience, or Adam, but in, in my experience with that, probably the best path to it is going to your dealer or general manager and asking them to mentor you and saying, I want to do better, I want to understand, I want to create more profit for the business. But I don't know what I don't know. Is there any way I could get you to explain it to me, to, you know, help me and mentor me? And then that usually opens up the door. You could also do that with the office manager, depending on your relationship with the office manager, right? Like, yeah, a lot of times the only time you see the office manager is when you're in trouble.

Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely my experience. Principal's office. 26-year-old service manager. Yeah, like it was, it was going to the principal's office If I was in there, it was 'cause like, you know, a receivable schedule didn't look right or wasn't, you know, something was like out of control, but I'd have been way, you know, and she was kind of mad at the world, but looking back on it, she probably should have been 'cause she had a bunch of service managers over her 40-year career that were like, that were like the, your first service manager you worked for, Chris. I'm sure that controller was pretty frustrated with that guy too, so she just had to put up with a bunch of them. But looking back on it too, I guarantee you if I would've just went to her and asked her to be a mentor and explain things to me, I know she would've. And not only did I not do that, like, you know, she probably didn't have, have experienced that very often. But I think that's some really great advice is go to the controller. And a lot of times, like, we look at accounting as kind of a thorn in the side, But they're a huge asset to you and they serve an important purpose. So looking back, man, it would've been so much better and I could've learned so much more and more quickly that would've set me up for success better.

Yeah, I would kind of say to that too, Hoagie, is we often get these questions about how to handle you know, the problem technician in the shop or the advisor that's been around a long time that doesn't want to change. It's, it's the same thing with the office manager. Like, I've had it happen to me many times where I've gone into a dealership to fix it and somebody will offhandedly say like, oh, that office manager, she's a battle ax, she's this and that. And I'll be like, Judy, really? Like, The, the mom that just had a grandkid, like, what, what do you mean? And what ends up happening is like our advice to getting to understand that technician that is the problem in the shop is to take them to lunch, maybe take them to dinner with their spouse and really get to know them as a human. One of the first things I would do with an office manager when I would go into a dealership is ask them about themselves. Nobody ever asks them about who they are as a human, where, what, You know, how many kids do you have? What are your hobbies? Like just talking to them like somebody who is just a, you know, a normal human being with aspirations and fears and hobbies and, you know, also a lifetime of experience. And I would always end that very first meeting with the office manager with, uh, hey, um, I'm going to be, I'm going to be fixing a lot of stuff. Make me a list of the things you want me to fix for you. And you guys want to guess what was on that list 100% of the time?

Warranty receivables.

Yeah. Warranty receivables. And then oddly enough, the, the GOG. Nobody measures the oil. They, they're always trying to get somebody to measure the oil. Like those two things, you know, and probably the, the third one would be open ROs.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. That was always the big thing that they hated was the open whipper RO report.

And then guess what would happen when I would address those things? Or even, I mean, same sort of thing, there's a lot of parallels, right? Like, how do you get technicians to do inspections for you all the time when you don't sell the work all the time? You go back to them and you say, hey, hoagie, thanks for doing the inspection. The customer's gonna wait. They, they can't afford it right now. But just the fact that I would go back to a technician and update them on what happened versus they just see the car leave has— gives you a ton of equity that you tried, right? It's the same thing with the office managers. Even if I, I have a lot of times I would have to put the warranty schedule to the side because I was fixing so much other stuff in the beginning. That was like month 4 or 5 for me. But I would tell them like, hey, I'm looking into that. It's coming. It's in, you know, I'm going to really address this here once I get this thing launched. And just updating them and telling them what's going on, it gives you a ton of equity. Not ignoring, because that's what everybody else does, right? Is they ignore it. They put the ROs in the drawer, that sort of thing. And so, you know, just talking to people like, well, like they're human and really updating them and telling them the truth, like, hey, I'm not, I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. And it, you know, and then you have to do what you say you're going to do also. Mm-hmm. But I would say like, I've, well, I have experience doing this with people who say the office manager's a battle ax and they're impossible. And the thing that I make them do is just go in there and talk only about them personally and not talk about business whatsoever for at least 30 minutes. And you're not allowed. So the rule is you're not allowed to talk about yourself. So just imagine if you went into your business manager and asked them like, oh hey, what did you do this weekend? Just like you would do with a customer in the drive. It's just petting them off. Same thing. What would you, what did you do this weekend? Oh, you have kids? Oh yeah. My, you know, my daughter's getting ready to have a kid. Oh, you're going to be a grandma? Oh, I'm already a grandma. I already have two. Can I see pictures? Like, that's it.

Like human.

Human connection. That's it. Like, be genuinely interested in people. And I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm different because when I'm having those conversations, I'm not faking it. That isn't a— it isn't a tactic. I really am genuinely curious about who the person is and what they, you know, what they know. Everybody knows something that I don't know. There's this, this saying, I think it's in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It's in one of his books. Where this guy had a plaque on his desk. And I actually, for a long time, had this on my desk, that everybody is superior to me in some way. And then of that, I, you know, I learn of them and, you know, we, we do this thing where it's like, oh, he's a, he's a cancerous tech. That's the, the battle axe. And we label things, but when we judge and we label them, they're kind of final. We don't come back to it. And it's not, it's not the most productive way to learn or to figure things out or fix things. You just, you just can't, you can't live in a singularity where people are just this thing and that's it. They're complicated. People are complicated. Business is complicated. And you, you have to, uh, you have to be open to that in that way. So the first answer would be mentorship. And then the second one would be making friends with the, with the office manager and, you know, genuinely asking like, what could I do better? And then show them that you're— that you are serious about it. Even if you fail, if somebody fails and they can tell me why they failed, I'm good. If you— if you're self-aware enough to say, hey, the reason why I failed is I didn't prepare enough, I didn't ask for help, you know, but if you just externalize control and you're like, oh, well, it's the market or these people are stupid or the office is a joke, you know, that— that isn't going to— we're not learning when we do that. I will say the other thing in that dealership that I worked at is they ended up hiring a younger male office manager. And I don't know, they kind of did the thing that they do in service where all of a sudden somebody's a director and somebody's a manager when they're adding layers to things. So one became the business manager and then the other was the office manager. The new guy coming in was really helpful. Just for like, they would get my paycheck wrong all the time. And he was, he was really helpful with fixing it, you know, getting you answers, telling you why, that sort of thing. I mean, that's all I was, I was an advisor, right? So I was really only dealing with him on that level. But it's funny that the, in, in dealerships, it's easier to hire somebody else than to fix the person that's there a lot of times. Add another layer of people.

Yeah, yeah.

Any other questions before we get, we get started on fixing dealerships?

I think one, I think one that's, um, I know we've talked about it over the years a lot, but, uh, still, anytime you're talking financial statements, some— you can have a small group of service managers, and this one always seems to come up, is Hey, I got, I got really intentional and really was working hard, pulling out all the stops to increase my gross and to increase my sales. Even thought it might even cost me my job if I wasn't hitting forecast over these next couple months. And, and I actually did it. Like, I increased gross quite a bit and we still lost the same amount of money or in some cases even more money.

Oh, that's very common. Very, very common.

Okay, so super disheartening to them.

First thing you have to understand is what gross profit is. So gross profit is what's left over after your direct cost of sale. So if you sell an hour of labor for $100 and your technician cost you $25 to produce that, and so we're assuming the technician runs at 100% in this equation, that the tech gets paid an hour and you collect an hour from the customer. So you collect $100, you pay the tech $25, your gross profit is $75. So that's what you have left over to pay the bills. Now, you're— you have two basic variables. It's simple and it's not simple. You have two basic variables: what you charge for the hour. So now If, if I charge $125 for the hour, but my cost is still $25, I'm making more gross, right? So I went from charging $100 an hour to $125, but I'm not paying the technician more for producing that hour, right? The two things are separate. The technician is getting paid whatever their hourly rate is. Just like if I have a technician making $35 an hour and one making $20 an hour, I can, let's say I have, let's say an alignment pays an hour and I have a technician that makes $35 an hour and I have a technician that makes $20. Well, I hold on, or the store holds on to more gross if you have the guy making $20 do the alignment versus the guy doing $35. Just like if you have quick lube techs, a lot of times the thinking, I hear this a lot, a lot of times The thinking is, well, have the quick lube techs do an oil change. Never have them do— never have a master tech that's making $35 an hour do an oil change. Well, there's, there's kind of two problems with that in a sense, right? The first one is, is if a quick lube tech is running at 50% efficiency and they're making $20 an hour, it's actually costing you $40 an hour to do that oil change. Versus having a master tech at $35. And the master tech then can probably even make time because they'll do it quicker. The other part is the master tech's going to do a better inspection than the quick lube tech. So we have a chance of selling something. So there's, there's variables there in your cost of labor. And what most people don't consider in their cost of labor is how efficient the technicians are. If you have a technician that makes $20 an hour, but is 50% efficient and you're paying them unapplied time, they, they have a guarantee of 8 hours a day. You're, you're costing yourself $40 an hour to produce that hour. And it's way better to give the $35 an hour technician that job because their flat rate or their commission on that. So it's what you charge for the hour and then what your efficiency is. And so a lot of times when we go into a store, and they're selling more, but their gross is going down and their expenses are going up, it's because their technicians aren't efficient. The way that they're dispatching, they usually have a quick lube, which the technicians are running like 50% efficient. You're not selling much off of the quick lube because it's just rush them through. Those quick lube techs really have no vested interest in inspecting the vehicles like somebody would if they were going to get the work right. So changing the system of lateral support versus a quick loop picks up a lot of profitability just because it's a force multiplier in efficiency and inspections and, you know, that sort of thing. And so there's, there's, there's some variables there in that equation. Most of the time what you see is we chase traffic by discount. So what we're charging per hour goes down because we're discounting it and then we have tech, that our cost of labor go is too high or we don't understand it. And so we end up losing more money the more work we do, which happens all the time in service departments. I've seen service departments, especially Toyota stores, where when we opened up, there were customers lined up a half a mile down to the stoplight. The, like, you just open the doors and that, that thing is busy. You got 20 service advisors and a shop full of techs, and every hour of labor you sell, you lose money. Like, the more you do— like, our RO count would increase and the hours that we would produce in the shop would increase, and it just meant we lost more money, which was, you know, insane. But because our, our cost of labor wasn't right, we— and our efficiency wasn't right, we had way too many unproductive hourly technicians and the way we dispatch the work, having a quick loop, and then discounting, driving traffic through. We were discounting to customers that didn't need a discount, they just wanted it done.

Yeah.

And, and so, yeah, you know, I know it's kind of complicated. I'm trying to make it sound simple, but it's not simple.

Yeah, well, I think that was a great explanation though. I think that was a couple of the a couple of the hot buttons. And it's a weird thing if you haven't had any formal training, if you haven't been taught the financials, things like that, somewhere along the way you will walk into a month where you had better gross. And usually if it wasn't intentional, the month where you had better gross will come from traffic. And then we start to buy into this thing and the tribal knowledge comes from the sales side. On the sales side, uh, it is a numbers game. They need more ups, they need more. And so a lot of times that knowledge makes its way over to the service drive and, uh, everybody thinks you just need traffic, you just need, uh, traffic.

And, um, it's never traffic.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a trick bag where I go advertise, I raise expenses, and on those coupons are discounts. I lower my ELRs. And then I do it even more times. And, and, you know, to your point with the Toyota stores, you, you, in that scenario, you're losing, uh, in a lot of situations more. So it's, uh, it's not intuitive, but it truly is the case. You got to slow down to speed up. You got to do better with each RO first and hit your benchmarks in ELR and hours per RO and total dollars per ticket, and then go increase those, you know, go increase those things.

Um, it's very rare that when, when you fix those things, anybody talks about traffic. Yeah, very rare. Like, there, there have been times. Most of the time it's when it's a new point and you just don't have the cars in, in your market. And so your, you know, sales hasn't sold into that market for 3 or 4 years. It's a new brand, you know, like you go into a market in California with Subaru and Subaru's just don't exist. And so, you know, there's very few Subarus in your area, then it is a traffic thing. But most of the time, traffic never is a conversation once you figure out how to have a system for, you know, selling more to each customer and getting your pricing right and your execution of the labor, the mix, how it's dispatched. Okay. So I talked about in the last episode how learning the financials was crucial. I knew that, right? And I was taught the financials. I spent a long time in a room with somebody explaining it. And it wasn't just the fixed ops part of the financials. It was the whole, you know, the dealership as a whole. And then From there, when I finally was fixing stores, you know, there's a few things that surprised me. So I would get, you know, I would do a presentation on the numbers that they had. And here, this is something we talk about all the time, right? Is like, you can tell what's going on in a dealership by looking at the financials. Now I'm 24 at this time, so I don't know that yet, but I figured it out pretty quick, is like, you, you, you, you know, you have a general sense of what the culture is like. You have a general sense for their systems and process. You have a general sense for the talent that is there. You kind of have a general sense for what the pay plans are. I mean, I most of the time could tell you that the advisors are paid on gross, that the manager isn't paid on net. Like, I can just tell you what the pay plans are by looking at the financials. What are some other things, Hoagie, you can tell by just looking at the financials? Receivables?

Um, just, yeah, yeah, the balance sheet. Um, looking at, looking at receivables, uh, looking at the parts inventory. A lot of times when parts inventory value is, is inflated in relation to an average sales month, uh, for the parts department, generally you find a lot of, uh, a lot of obsolescence in that scenario. Yeah, you mentioned receivables, if receivables are really high in relation to, you know, kind of the average sales for the month for the service department. All those things kind of go hand in hand. And then like the other thing I've noticed too is like when it's really loose, You can kind of bet when you get there, like, what the shop is going to look like, what the service drive is going to look like. Like, last year's tire sales banner is in the corner.

It's just like, you know, I mean, yeah, Barbara from Shark Tank says if you want to know what somebody's like, go look at their car. Like, open their trunk of their car and it's a mess, right? You can just tell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like that. You can tell by the financial how messy the shop's going to be. And if you, you would only understand this if you were doing what we do, because most people will inherently disagree with what we're saying, but it's just a funny pattern. It's just something that you start to realize over time.

It is a, it, yeah, it is a crazy perspective to look at a financial statement first and then go see the people and the location. Usually it's the opposite of that, right? Like if I start at a, at a store, as an FOD or service manager, as a GM, I see all the people in the facilities first and then I get familiar with the outcomes. When you do that in reverse order, it doesn't take long to connect those dots. Yeah, I think that is—

It's a little bit faster. It's a little faster going that way. It's what I appreciate. I liked also seeing if they even had the unapplied time in their financials. It's sad that it's there, but I liked it at least that they're tracking it.

Yeah. And there's another thing that happens with just human biases, and we're vested in the idea that humans are the most important part because we're humans. Like, we're biased to humans because we're humans. And this comes up in a lot of areas in the way that you wouldn't understand this if you weren't seeing it from our point of view of fixing service departments because you're a human and your biases, you think that the people are the most important thing. Now, when I say stuff like this, people go, oh, you know, uh, how could you say that people are the most important thing? And, um, there's like a, there's another side of this, just connecting dots that happens to me often is, uh, I, for example, I will interview somebody. And, uh, somebody will tell me like, oh, I really like them. And I'm like, okay, well, I liked them too, but they can't keep a job for more than 6 months. They bounce around. They've never fixed anything in their life. Like, I like them, but they don't have a track record of performance. And so is, do, do I wanna hire somebody because I like them or do I wanna hire them because they're the right person for the seat on the bus that I have open? Right now. And there's a great book I would recommend that everybody read. It— we've done it as a book report with our coaches, and it's, uh, written by these two Stanford professors, and it's called Person and the Situation. And it just goes through how we, we think that things are about people. We think that Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time because Tom Brady is special. Tom Brady is special, but Tom Brady wouldn't be who he is today if he wouldn't have fallen into a system and had coaches, you know, and been surrounded by the players he was in a system that was best suited for him. If Tom Brady would have been drafted by the Browns, we probably wouldn't even be talking about Tom Brady. He probably would have never made it off the bench because nobody ever makes the— you know, it's kind of like, I, I'm sorry to do this, Adam, but I joke about this all the time with the Bears. It's like, how many first-rounders do the Bears need to draft before they realize they should start drafting an offensive line? Like, it, it, you can't say that, like, Jake the Snake is— like, how many quarterbacks have you guys taken in the first 5 picks of the draft?

Too many. But I will throw this out. What about—

how many linemen have you taken in the first, first? Yeah, none, probably. Please look that up and post it in the comments for Adam. But Um, and so there's this weird inherent thing that we do that, like, when we're saying, like, by looking at the financial statement, I can tell the culture in a dealership. I can tell what the dealer or the general manager is like as a manager. I could tell, you know, they think they're a leader, but they're really a manager sort of a thing. I can tell a lot about something by looking at the numbers. And because we're biased as humans and we think, well, a business is about the people, It is about the people, but the people have to be led and the people have to have structure and, and there's different types of people. And so to me, the thing that I figured out fixing, fixing businesses is that businesses fall into 3 buckets. And somebody actually taught me this later on. I didn't know this when I, when I first started fixing service departments. There's, there's the, the first bucket, which is they're losing money. So if they're losing a pretty good grip of money— and Warren Buffett, like a lot of, a lot of really famous business guys that have bought and sold and turned businesses around will say that if a business is losing money, the management needs to go. Now, why, why do you guys think that they say that?

They're not managing the business. They're not even paying attention.

Yeah, they're just not capable of it. Like I had a dealer that is, you know, he owns 12 dealerships and very successful. And when he would buy a dealership, it was losing money. He said the broom has to sweep clean. Like you just have to get rid of that mindset because it's the, it's the mindset of the people in the business that's keeping it from making money. Right. Most of the time it's their perspective, their opinion, their biases. But you— that's the hardest thing to fix in somebody is their biases and their perspective. Does that make sense? And so the first bucket is it's losing money. And if it's losing a lot of money, you can assume the management is terrible. You can assume there's no processes in place, that it's, you know, it's not— it's not by chance that it's losing money. You actually have to do a lot of things wrong to have a service department lose money. It's a pretty simple business at the end of the day. When, you know, when we talk about fixing other businesses, a service department and parts department in a car dealership is, is a closed-loop system. It's very easy. You don't have to do any marketing. All you really have to do is open up the doors, answer the phone, and take care of the people that the sales department has teed up for you. Like, you know, if you go and open a business today that isn't a service department, you have to go find customers. You, you're going to spend most of your time on marketing and finding customers. Not— you don't have customers just when you open up the door, right? So it's a very— it's a, it's, it's a very kind of a thin— like, you don't have to be super talented or good at what you do in order to do that. The second bucket is that they're breaking even. Now, if a, if a service department or parts department is breaking even, you probably have some good people, broken processes, and you can, you can get them to making money pretty quick. When they're, when they're losing money, to get them to break even is like giving childbirth. Like it's, it's harder to get one from losing money to break even than getting a service department from break-even to making really, really good money. And so, and then you have the third one, which is they're making good money and they just want the Law of the Slide Edge. So they already have processes in place, they already have good leadership, and they're just looking for new ideas, new input, new ways to add to their business. Like, hey, we want to add a fleet department. We want to, we want to figure out service. Yeah, with mobile service, whatever it is, they just want to constantly get better and they, they want to interact with people that are in a lot of different businesses and know what we know. Then those are, those are the easiest clients because you tell them something and they just execute it. Where the, the people in the business that are losing money, you tell them something and they spend most of their time just figuring out how you're wrong. Like they're just committed. To figuring out how you're wrong, not fixing it, you know, in any way. And like, even to the point where most of the time the questions that managers and people in a, in a store that are losing money ask are never questions, they're statements like, what do we do when this doesn't work? That's not a question. That's a statement, right? And so you can, you can tell by the questions somebody asks You can, you, you know, you, and you can tell by the financial statement what, what you're dealing with. Um, so most, most of my early stores were losing a lot of money. So I'm dealing with, I'm dealing with, and I didn't understand, cause I would think, okay, how quick can I get them to 30% net to gross? And I didn't understand that there's almost a reset that you get to break even. You reset and then you start making money, but that getting to break even is the hardest part. And if I'm just fixing stores that are losing money, I, you know, I, I, I have an uphill battle, which was the first 5 years of my career fixing stores was, was an uphill battle. And I, and I tell you all this to kind of try to explain, and this is a hard one to explain. And maybe, maybe you guys can help me because I was trying this morning to think of all of these analogies, but imagine if you were having a, uh, a Fourth of July party and you hired me to come, come with, with my mobile barbecue trailer where I can make brisket and barbecue for you. What, what's the face, Adam? You don't think I can make brisket?

I think you try.

Here we go.

Okay. Hey, this is perfect. So this is— Adam is exactly the kind of person that you run into in a service department losing money. He's already like, what you want?

What you want?

I'm already in a category.

I'm already in a bucket. Hold on a second. What are you hiring me to do for your 4th of July party? What is my job at your 4th of July party?

Make me some brisket.

No, what you want to feed the people at the party.

Yes. Right.

People. That's a pretty simple thing. But already we're not talking about feeding the people. Adam isn't like, hey, what kind of baked beans? What are we going to serve for sides? What are we serving? Lemonade? Like, you know, what kind of barbecue sauce? No, he's talking about, oh, you couldn't make— you know, he's already— he's already asking questions that aren't questions, they're statements. Right. Perfect. This is great. We don't— I don't think we have to explain it more than this. This was the thing that surprised me because I would, I would meet with the dealer and I would get their financials and I would do this projection and I'd be like, okay, if I, if I add a couple techs and I increase the hours per row and I move their effective labor rate up $10, this Excel spreadsheet, oh, we would make, you know, we'd be 20% net to gross. And I'd present it and the dealer would be like, that's what I want. I want my service department to not lose money anymore. He would sign sign my contract. And the way the contract worked was there was a sign-up fee that covered the first 2 months. So the first month was research, the second month was implementing that research, so moving desks around, hiring techs, training advisors, whatever it is. And then the third month I would go commission and I would get a percentage of the increase year over year, which I explained in in the last video. That's— that— and then it went for 12 months on commission. So I was comparing January of 2025 to January of 2026, February of 2025 to February of 2026, sort of a thing. And so I had 2 months to set this thing up, and then it went commission. And if we didn't see an increase, I didn't make any money. Um, and so it, you know, was an all-or-nothing kind of a thing, which Seems extreme, but I loved it. Like, I love that kind of all or nothing thing. But to my point is I would get, I would get these service departments that were losing money. I would get the dealer to agree to hire me. Then he would introduce me to his managers and then guess what would happen? And Adam, you've already kind of previewed for everybody what would happen with your brisket thing.

We already tried that.

You can't make brisket.

Yeah, we already tried to make brisket.

Nobody wanted to make money. Nobody wanted to make money. Nobody wanted new ideas. No, no. But, uh, we, you know, we've had consultants in here before. This will never— it's a 90-day thing and it'll go away. Like, and I, I was just dumbfounded that these people were working in a business that was slowly bleeding to death, dying. The other parallel to this is when we say that, uh, you look at a financial statement and they're losing money, you can, you can make the assumption because it'll be accurate 99% of the time that the customers have the worst experience possible. They are torturing customers, but you go into the service department and they're like, oh no, our customers love us. And you're like, well, your CSI— oh, well, CSI is fake. And like, well, I just saw a lady yelling in the drive-thru. Oh, well, she's crazy. And like, you're like, everything around you is telling you that this thing isn't running the way it should. But we're going to spend all day sitting here arguing about whether it works or not when you're losing money. Like, the ultimate report card is this is business and you take in a dollar and you lose a dollar 10. Like, at the end of the day, it would be cheaper to hand out nickels to customers coming in than to actually let them come in and write them up. You'd make more money by turning people away the way you're doing it. But nobody wants to talk about that. No, it just— the oddest thing in the systems in service departments are so archaic and they've just been handed down from the person you worked for before. And the only reason we do them is because they're familiar, not because they get results, not because they work, not because they're better. There's, there's no sense of how do we constantly improve. And then all these companies come in with software and we're like, oh, the, the, the software is going to fix it. The, you know, the tablets, we, well, uh, we're going to put in tablets and you're like, okay, well, what are tablets going to do? Like, what does that— It doesn't fix that, that you're— you got, you know, $25,000 in policy and $20,000 in unproductive labor. Like, a tablet's going to fix that? Your basic system is broken. It doesn't make any sense. And hey, you know, Jerry, the advisor that doesn't like people, he's not going to like people more because you give him a tablet. That actually makes it worse. Believe it or not, the tablet makes him less likable than the, than the spaghetti stain shirt that he wears every day that hasn't been washed in a month, that he got free at the Ford convention 20 years ago. Like, what are we— like, and I'm 24 years old, and I would get hired, and then I would go into these departments just to sit there and just go, I don't understand what we're talking about anymore. I remember there was this, uh, this dealership group, and I did my presentation of what we're gonna fix. What needs to be fixed. And you got— this dealership group had a lot of executives. There were a lot of executives, and they all start arguing. And then they're, you know, they're, they're having these knock-down drag-out fights about, uh, the pay plan and this and that. And I remember, uh, after like— so I don't know, I think I gave my presentation at 10 in the morning. It's 5 in the afternoon. I'm hungry. Like, and I'm just listening to these people argue about nothing. And I finally, I was just like, hey, you guys don't know what the hell you're doing. And everybody looks at me like, how dare you? And I'm like, you guys are losing money. I don't know. Like, the same thought process that got you to losing money is this. Nobody's talking about how do we get better? How do we make more money? You're talking about what? Like, I don't even know what you're talking about anymore. I'm, I'm just confused. I'm as confused as you guys are. Like, this thing isn't like— it's not that complicated. Like, how do customers feel when they come in? How easy do we make it for them to come in? What do we do with them when we have them? How efficient is our shop? How are we setting everybody up for success? How consistent are we being? Like, this isn't— we don't, we don't need to— we don't need to argue for 6 hours. Like, this is a straight line. It's not, you know, but that would happen to me over and over and over again where I would get introduced in the, you know, hey, Chris is going to help here. And then I would sit with the service manager and they all kind of look the same. They had like the white dress shirt that was short sleeve. You guys remember this?

Couldn't—

the black tie very well. So they would be sitting in their little tiny service manager office and I would be in this little chair kind of up against the wall and almost touching their desk. Right. And then for 2 hours they'd be like, so where did you work? What? And they're just like, and then the resume statement, they start telling me how great they are. And in my head I'm like, okay, like you're 55 years old and I get that you want to feel great. I get that. But your department's losing money. Nobody wants to work here and your customers hate it. Like, what are we talking? I don't understand what we're talking about. Like, I want to get to work. Like, I'm, I'm like, this is the other thing that drives me crazy when I'm in a service department, when a customer is upset, like I want to go help that customer that's yelling right now. And you're telling me that you're a legend and like, of what? Like, I don't under— like, all I can deal with is I was hired to help you figure out how to make money. And we're talking about everything else but how to make money. And I promise you, if we start talking about how to make money, anything that we track will improve exponentially. Everything we start to work on is going to get better just because we're work— what is What is the saying, Adam? Like, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Yep. But we're not letting in the sunlight in this little office. Like, there's no sunlight. There's zero sunlight whatsoever. And so it was really, really hard for me to, uh, kind of figure this out in the beginning because I knew how to fix it, but nobody wanted to fix anything. Everybody wanted to justify that their market was different, that their situation was different, and they would just externalize control. And, you know, there's this kind of secret to success in anything, right? It's focus on the things you can control. Like, if you— like, could we, could we figure out how to make the appointment system better? Could we set up the techs for success? Could we have a pay plan that is a little more effective. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's do the things that we can do to fix it. Let's stop talking about the market. We can't control the market. We, you know, in a sense, we can't even control what the dealer does. Like, that's another thing that happens to us a lot is the dealer will go, well, I don't, I don't want to, to pay them on net because, you know, I got a mistress in Vegas and I got boats and I got all this other stuff in the financial. And I'm always like, that's the starting point. Like, If we were going to, if, if we were going to pay them 5%, we'll pay them 7%, but they have to be responsible for the direct expenses that they're controlling. You know, let's put the, let's put the girlfriend somewhere else in the financial statement, but that, you know, there has to be some sort of linear thought process in, in, in how we approach this. And, oh man. I don't know if you guys can imagine what that's like when you're 24. You're not equipped. I'm not equipped emotionally to, to, to deal with that. And I got, you know, that's how I got the nickname the Bulldog, because I would go in and I would end up getting rid of the manager. I would ended up getting rid of half of the advisors pretty quick. Like, I, I was running ads for those things in the market. I was going into blindly. Just trying to have a bench because I couldn't, I just couldn't sit there and talk for months. I didn't have the time. I needed to fix it. And I found that their shop foreman or their kind of middle of the road advisor, usually not the top advisor, usually the middle of the road advisor would make a better manager than the one that had 30 years of experience. And I just kind of coined this term, like they got 30 years of experience working against them. Because they don't want to talk about how to get better. They don't want to learn the— they don't want to— they don't want to learn anything. They don't want to get better. They just want to tell me that, you know, I'm from Seattle, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm, you know, whatever. They'd come up with a million reasons why we couldn't get better and why it would never work. And so, you know, that's kind of when I got the name the Bulldog, because dealers would say, oh, this guy, he— they would introduce me in their 20 group. They'd be like, This guy's a bulldog. You want him? He'll get it done. Like, but I would get it done. But there'd be a lot of collateral damage when I was younger in the, in the process, right? In that way. And so kind of when you think I made a list of the, the things that I would do when I went in and how I kind of figured out to leverage this. So the first thing I would do in that first month when I, when I went in to fix the service department is it was just research. And I, I learned not to judge anything in a sense, like just to go in with a completely open mind, almost to the point of betraying what I knew and saying like, this is a unique store in a unique market with unique people. Just learn what's going on. So I would interview everybody in parts and service and it, you know, is 4 or 5 questions. And I would sit, it would take me 2 weeks to do this in an average size service department. I would call them in to an office or the conference room or whatever. And I would just ask them a series of questions like how, you know, what do you think's going on? How could I get better? Something that I, that I would figure, figure out right away is that the porters and the cashiers knew more about what was going on in the business than the manager. Yeah, the porters knew which advisors didn't call people back, which advisors didn't. And I knew that when I was a porter too, like, because you bring the car up and the customer's like, hey, I told them about this, but they didn't fix it. And then you go look at the RO and it's not even on the RO. And so you knew which— you knew when customers showed up to pick up their car and it wasn't ready, that advisor doesn't call his customers, right? And so you just have a general sense. Same thing, like, the cashiers know And back then, like, customers called in, there was no switchboard. So they know which advisors get the most calls, which advisors will take a call, you know. And then the other thing, they knew who was sleeping with who. And so they knew that the dealer was sleeping with this cashier, or the manager was doing this, or these two advisors were doing this. But they, they knew, you know, and they would just tell you all of this. They would say like, hey, I keep telling them that we should this, but in kind of like my experience as a, as an advisor is like, um, you know, this, this warranty administrator assistant manager would get away with murder, wasn't very good at what they did, but they had this relationship with the manager that trumped results. It did. You know, I say this all the time, but I'm like, that person must have naked pictures of the other person because there's no way you would forego results over somebody's dumb opinion about something. How does this person have this much say or control in the department when they don't— they have no track record of success and what they are saying doesn't make any sense. But we're, we're doing that. Like, you know, just like the different things that I would, that I would be put through as an advisor is, oh, Chris is avoiding oil changes. We're going to do an audit of all the ROs. Chris Collins, the reason why Chris writes the numbers he writes is because he's at the front. We're going to move him to the back. And then they would end up having to undo all of that because none of that was true. What was true was I wrote the most customers. I was there the earliest. You know, we're going to take night drops away and then that creates another problem. And so then they give me night drops back because I was the only one that would show up and do them. You know, it's just this. But that happens in every service department all over the place. There's all these weird Things that have nothing to do with this, like, linear straight line of, you know, we could do better. We could have better systems than the ones from 1925 that Henry Ford invented. But unfortunately, most service departments still run that, run that way. Right. Um, so I'd interview everybody that gave me an upper hand because I knew what was going on. And now I had a relationship with everybody. Now let's say, how, how often do you think a service manager goes back and talks to his techs about how we could improve?

Zero.

I'm the first one to come in there and ask the technicians, hey, what could we do better to make you more efficient, to make you more productive? Well, it'd be nice if the special tools were where they're supposed to be, or, you know, it'd be nice if there's this weird policy that we— like, there's just all these weird things that would go on, like, You know, uh, we don't take checks or we don't take credit cards or, you know, just all this stuff that would, was anti-business that we would throw the baby out with the bathwater because one time, you know, something happened and then we're not going to do night drops anymore. We're not going to take credit cards anymore, you know, whatever it is. And so I would have this long list of just stuff that makes no sense from the interviews. And then I w— I would understand the culture of the business and what was going on. Um, I, most of the time also, and you know, this dates me a little bit. There was, when I would ask for tech efficiency, nobody had it. It was all a guess. So I would ask the manager to be like, what's your, what's your tech efficiency in the shop? Oh, it's probably 130%. They're still doing lick 'em and stick 'em. Nobody's figuring that out. So I would actually sit and do the efficiency and it was 80% or whatever. It was way different. Than what they thought. But I would do that as part of my research upfront. Very time-consuming. I, you know, ended up hiring assistants to help me with this sort of thing. Eventually, I would do an RO audit. So I'd go through all the ROs and, you know, I would ask the manager like, hey, what's the process for inspect? Oh, they inspect every car. No RO ever had an inspection sheet. Like, you were lucky if there was a phone number for the customer, right? Like, uh, then I would do an expense analysis and I would find all kinds of weird anomalies and expenses that made no sense. I would do the chart of accounts. I'd figure that out. I would just watch their processes. So I would just stand and watch the shop. I would stand and watch the customer's experience. I would, uh, call as if I was a customer and try to make an appointment, that sort of thing. But basically by the end of these 2 weeks of research, of observing, digging deep into their numbers, interviewing everybody in the department, I had a really good idea of what was going on. And then I would, I would go home and I would just drink. Cause like, it was so daunting. Like they, you guys got to think I'm 24 and I'm my first store I did, I was 24 years old. Like, and I'm dealing with these, these old managers that don't want to change, don't think anything's broken and are okay with the fact that they're losing money in their department because they're paid on gross. It doesn't make any difference to them. And the, you know, the analogy of, hey, if, if you looked at this business like your own personal checking account, you, you know, you couldn't lose money every month and survive. That never landed, never connected with any of that. Well, I get my paycheck and I've been doing this 30 years and I could go somewhere else and get a job as a service manager tomorrow. Just, you know, just total incompetence. Time after time after time. It was, uh, it was insane.

So, but Chris, how did you real quick, how did you like figure that out that you had to do like 2 weeks of research by like trial and error or what?

No, I was taught that by the, by the consulting company I was working with.

Ah, okay.

I expanded the research over, you know, as I was going, because there would be things like, um, there would be things that would happen. Like, for example, the parts department wouldn't be able to keep up once I would launch sales. And so I learned to get the parts department's end of month statement and really look into parts. I, I, You know, I figured out some things that I needed to know that were in addition, but I had a pretty good, pretty good outline to start with, if that makes sense. I also changed the questions in the interviews just because my style is different, right? Like, I really am genuinely interested about the person as much as anything else. Now, other things that you would find too, like, um, warranty fraud. Like just plain and simple time theft. Well, you know, the thing, like I, I had this happen many times, but I would go to the dealer and I would say like, hey, you guys are committing warranty fraud. You got, you, you have 3, uh, time clocks in the shop. And I go, just do me a favor, go out there and watch. They're all an hour apart. Like, And they're doing like— it's not like you wouldn't have to be a good warranty auditor to understand. And it's fraud. Like, you're stealing. And there's a, there's a dealership group that literally they're number one. They used to be number one. They're not right now. But for 20 years, they were number one for their brand in the country, if not the world. And I went to that dealer and I said, hey, you guys are committing warranty fraud on a crazy scale. What, you know what tipped me off to it is there was a, there was a quick lube tech making $220 grand. And then I just started like digging in. So this guy had 3 quick lube techs working for him and he was, he was doing, he was just doing crazy stuff and he was kind of, he was treated like a hero. But he was, he was stealing from the dealership and from the factory. And then everybody in the shop was committing warranty fraud. And I went to this, this dealer and I said, hey, you know, here it is, the proof. Because, you know, I'm showing him proof. I'm not— I would never walk in and just be like, hey, I think you're like— I want to know. And I'd done my research and he goes, I don't want to talk about that. And I said, I want to talk about it. Like, I'm not like— here's the problem is I'm about to double your sales. And if the manufacturer comes in here and finds this fraud on my watch, they're going to blame— like, I now own this because your numbers are about to blow up in a way you've never experienced. And I ended up firing the client like a couple of times. I fired clients because they, they were so used to cheating that they, they couldn't conceive that there was actually a real way to make money that was scalable and fair., but you know, I would find warranty fraud all the time. Like the most common thing with the Lick 'Em and Stick 'Em was that there were 2 or 3 time clocks that had, you know, they were half an hour, an hour apart, which was, uh, nuts. Um, yeah. Did I answer your question, Adam? Mm-hmm. Okay. So then I would, um, I would go away. So I would go into this thing with an open mind. I would do all this research. I would try even when I was doing the research not to prejudge. Like if one technician said something that was outlandish, like, hey, they're committing warranty fraud, I would, you know, I'd write that down. But if 5 said something, if 5 people told me the manager was sleeping with the cashier, okay, now I just have commonalities, right? Like there's a, there's a list of commonalities that give everything kind of a different weight. So I would not think about the dealership once I got home for a week. Like, I would just put it out of my head because it's so much to take in. And then I would come back to it and I would start to devise a plan. And so I would, you know, I would devise a plan, then I would timeline that plan. So like, first thing I got to do is I got to hire 8 techs, I got to hire 2 advisors, and I got to get an estimate of how to rearrange the write-up area to be more customer friendly. And I got to add 3 advisors or whatever. And that was pretty common. Like, you know, most service departments were built for 1 or 2 advisors. It's been 20 years. We need 5 or 6 advisors. I have to create— so I have to get a contractor to give me an estimate, you know, that sort of thing. And then the 4th week, I would be back in the dealership presenting the plan. Because I, I only got 30 days to build this, to execute this. So it had to move pretty fast. And so, you know, I'm trying to get a contractor. Sometimes I would have to rent an offsite facility to put techs. So, you know, I could, I could find in a lot of metro markets, bigger cities, they were landlocked where the dealership was, but just 2 miles away, I could rent a warehouse, put in 10 lifts and do internals there. You know, do other stuff. A lot of times, like in a big Ford store, I could move the heavy duty truck stuff somewhere where the techs could have 2 or 3 stalls, right? I could give them 2 stalls and then a place in the middle. And I could, I could rent, you know, back then I could rent a warehouse, put in these stalls for not that, you know, not that much. I could very easily make a business case that this thing's going to do $200,000 in gross and it's going to cost us, you know, $3,500 a month. And, you know, I don't know, $70 grand in lifts or, you know, whatever it was. But I would, I would, I had, you know, I had people all over the country that could do lifts. Like I was friends with those guys. Sometimes I would have to go, if the dealer didn't want to spend the money or couldn't spend the money, I would go get a loan from the oil company. Back then, that was a pretty common thing that I would do. So I would, I would go to Pennzoil or somebody, get a contract for the oil, and then use that money to add lifts. I, you know, if they didn't have money for improvements, and I would kind of teach the dealer how you can do that if they didn't know, but I, I, uh, I had to have a pretty solid plan. I had to sell it to the dealer and then I had to execute it very quickly. And, uh, yeah. And, and so a lot of times that's what it was is I had to add desks and I had to add lifts because there's just no way that you're— the average store that I would do, I would double their sales within 90 days. Like, and I had to create the capacity to do that. So I had to build it and quickly, which, you know, you can't always get lifts in 2 weeks. It takes a, you know, a little bit of time in some cities that you got, you know, you got the permitting process, that sort of thing. So you could go to an alternative schedule, like 4:10s with the techs or something like that. But I had to increase the production. So then. While I'm doing all that, I start training the advisors. I have new pay plans. I would have to introduce the pay plan to the advisors because I couldn't trust the manager to do it. So I would have to be back there the week before the launch to sit down with every advisor, go through the pay plan, reach, you know, a lot of times I was getting rid of dispatch and putting lateral support in. So I'd have to meet with the techs and explain that. We would have to do some sort of draft of techs. So kind of like an NFL draft where you're like, okay, here's the 4 team leaders that are clear team leaders. Now, who are we going to put them with? And, you know, that takes time. Then you got to move those techs around in the shop, that sort of thing. So I was doing a lot of change very, very quick. What I figured out is that the more change you do quickly, the more just gets done. Like if you try to, break it out over time, it's death by a thousand paper cuts. So if you launch the thing but you don't do the pay plan, they're already making too much money and you can't change it, right? You just, you kind of have to do everything at once. And here, here's the, the funny thing, right? As I'm doing all this stuff, nobody in the dealership understands what's about to happen. Nobody can conceive that we're doing $400,000 in labor sales and we're going to do $800,000 very, very soon. Like, that's inconceivable to them that things could double. Right. And so I'm excited. I know I see the vision. I know what's about to happen. But, you know, basically nobody in the, in the seats that matter believe that. They're just kind of like, okay, we're, you know, this guy came from our 20 group and people say he's good, we'll tolerate him. But I was very much on my own kind of tricking them into doing these things or creating so much momentum that it's like you just met the guy and the lifts are coming. Like, you, you just don't have time to do it. Yeah. And I would have to be the one talking to the dealer all the time because I couldn't let the manager get it. If the manager If they ever asked the manager, what do you think? I was dead in the water. Oh, well, I saw this one time, there was a lawsuit. It like, you know, just all these weird things that had nothing to do with anything. And then I'm back to ground.

You can't smoke brisket. He can't smoke brisket.

It's like, okay, well then your people aren't going to eat at your 4th of July party. Whatever you want, Adam. It's fine. Um, but yeah, I just, And so, and just remember, I'm commissioned and I don't, I don't make any money if I don't fix it. And so I had to figure out like another thing that I, that I got really good at. And I talk about this to you guys all the time is when people say stupid stuff, I would just agree with them. Like I would just agree with them because I, I tried so hard to, to get people to think in a different way. I tried so hard to change people and I just came to the realization that you can't change. You got to trick them into success. Like they would already be successful if they wanted to be right. Like I figured out how to read financials because I wanted to. Nobody, nobody had to convince me. I knew, like, I'm like, I know that this is the secret. The key to the lock is there and I got to, I got to get that key. But, oh, you know, most of the time the reason why people aren't succeeding is because they don't want to be. Indifference is a decision. It's, it's a, it's a very strong position to, to take indifference that we want to stay the same, that we want to keep doing things the way that we're doing them. And so you can't change. It's really, really hard to change somebody's mind. That they could do better, that they could double their sales. Like, we talk about this with our advertising, right? Like, if we come out and we say, hey, our average client sees an increase of $30 in ELR, people go, oh, well, you're ripping customers off. And it's like, no, we're not. Not at all. We're just fixing— we're fixing all the stuff that isn't fixed. Like, it's not one thing. It's a bunch of different things that are doing that, but nobody believes that that's possible. So you got to just do it. And then, then the other thing, the funny thing is once they're fighting you all the way to not do it, which makes you really bitter inside, like you, especially when you're young. Like I said, I wasn't mature when you're young. They're telling, you know, you, you trick them into success. And then the funny thing is, is the only way it works long-term is if you let them, if you let them take credit that it was their idea and that they did it.

Yeah.

Yep. Which is a fu— it's a, it's a really, really funny thing, but humans will just go, oh yeah, that was, I did this. Like, and you're like, you don't remem— like we have coaches that work for us that were in our program that have completely forgot what a pain in the ass they were when they were clients. I, right?

Like, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, they, they completely miss all of these things that I did to them to get them to succeed. Like, it's like, and you know, the, the, the other part of that is most service managers don't get the financial statement. Most service managers are overlooked. So when I would flip this thing, and if I could just get get these managers to think that it's their idea and to accept it as part of the new norm, then I could get them to maintain it. And then I could raise their influence. They had a, they would get a seat at the table. They would start to feel better about themselves. And in the end, the thing that I learned is really what I'm doing is fixing self-esteem. They never, they never thought that it was possible because they didn't believe they were of value. They didn't believe that they, they were good enough to have that sort of success. They thought it should be hard. They thought that they deserved for it to be bad. Right. It's just this, this funny thing. And so I was in the business of, so like I was raising their self-esteem by tricking them into the results, making them believe that it was them. And then once they did that, they, it was really hard for them to think the way they used to think. And, you know, I'm super curious about human behavior and why we do the things that we do. Most people aren't. So to them, it's just another day, and this is— it was that way a month ago, and now this month it's this way sort of a thing, right? So, you know, you're putting in an inspection system, so you're making sure that the techs are inspecting every car. You're holding the advisors accountable. To sell the work, you know, and, and one thing that was a force multiplier for me that I figured all out a little later on by accident was gamification. Did so— like, people— I wrote a book about it because it, it's so transformative. Is like, you can get people to do anything if you gamify it. Like, um, and then the other, the other part of that is they learn more when they're gamified, they have more fun. Like, it just, it, it changes so many elements of what I was fighting before. And now it, it's just momentum. It just creates instant momentum and curiosity. And so when advisors would be like, hey, that won't work here, they'd be like, how? Teach me how to do it. Like, I want to win. I want to, you know, I want to win at Scrabble or whatever the game was that we were playing. So gamification was, was a force force multiplier in so many ways. Also, like, when the dealer would come back to service and everybody's having fun, or customers would come in and everybody's having fun, that, that happiness and joy is contagious to everybody around. So it ends up being a place you want to be because people are enjoying what they're doing. And if you fix the process— so that's the other thing is you can do twice as much in sales, but it feels easier than when you were doing less because the processes are in place. There's a meaning and a reason to everything. And you can put all that stuff in place really, really quick. And then the, the next part, like once I would kick it off that third month and we would get momentum, we would start selling more, would be looking at the numbers every day. We would be tracking the shop, we'd be tracking what we were selling, that sort of thing. Then, uh, month 3 was usually pretty good. Month 4 was really good. And then I could just put it on a calendar that either month 5 or month 6, they were going to forget everything and revert back to the way things were. Just in every single department, every time that, uh, they would lose consistency and they would revert back and you, you, you know, they would stop doing the daily meetings, they would stop going through ROs, they would stop talking to the techs in the shop, they would stop everything that was working and they would just revert back to the old way of doing things. Manager is in his office with a seatbelt on, staring at a computer. Advisors, you know, like everything. For some reason, everything would revert back. So then I just learned how to get ahead of that and I would just tell them like, hey, you're going to revert back. And, you know, I would just make it a conversation. I would trick them, I would switch things up. And then if you can, if you can get them to do it for 6 months, it, it becomes pretty consistent. And then on, you know, on that program, the other thing that always kind of surprised me is they would do better year 2 than year 1 because year 2 was they were looking for that Law of Slight Edge. So when I go back to, there's kind of 3 types of dealerships, the one losing money, the one breaking even, the one making money. Once they were making money, They were looking for the law of the slight edge and little hinges would swing big doors. Now you could start doing events. Now you could start doing mobile. Now, you know, they just, and they believed, now they believed that you could do better by thinking in a different way, right? They, they were looking at it more like a feedback loop of how can we constantly improve versus how can we just hold still and sit right here and put as much weight on this spot as we can and not move versus it's a wheel that's spinning. How can we constantly make it more efficient, make it better? Does that make sense? Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Yeah. At 24 is when I started that. I mean, just imagine the thing like I, I've— there's, there's a couple of things in my life that I feel so lucky for that I feel like gives me an advantage over most people that I interact with every day. The first one is growing up in Mexico as a missionary's kid. Like, I saw a thing this morning. Some celebrity was like talking about how, how America isn't great or whatever. And I'm like, typical middle-class entitled kid that's never been anywhere else. Like, go, go somewhere else and see what it's like. Like, yeah, growing up in Mexico And also just seeing how people there were happier and they had less than people here that are unhappy and entitled and they have more was such a gift, was such a gift as a, as a young kid to understand that and to have that experience. And then the other one was fixing, you know, I could fix 2 or 3 service departments a year and I was doing that for ye— for 15 years. And then I got to the point where I had people under me and they were doing it and I was managing them. And I would, you know, basically go in for the research, for the kickoff. And then I, you know, the, my team could kind of maintain it from there. But, um, and then, you know, then we were, we were launching like maybe, maybe 7 to 10 a month in a sense. So doing that over and over and over again and just figuring out how to trick people into success and how to do this, like, you know, uh, magic trick where it's a sleight of hand and everybody's better for it, taught me about leadership. It, it taught me about psychology. It taught me about tempo and speed and momentum. And it's an art, like, it really is. And it, it's an art more, more than anything else. And I, you know, it's rare that I've ever sat with somebody and had a conversation where they have done the same sort of— like, they've had that same experience where it's all or nothing, when everybody is against what you're trying to do. Like, that's it. It's a, it's a weird thing, right? That everybody is against it and you still can get it done. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, it makes it that much more rewarding.

I guess, I guess there's 3 things in my, in my life that I'm happy for: growing up in Mexico, fixing, fixing service departments, and the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl this year.

That was for you. I'm gonna be happy about, for sure, the Bears. The Bears got it next year, right?

It's always Yep, next year.

As a true Chicago sports fan, well, next year we'll talk about that halfway through the season.

Okay, cool. Oh, I, I think we're gonna have the curse that, uh, they're already trying to put what, Caleb Williams on Madden 27 or whatever, or is it 26?

I don't know.

Yeah, uh, that doesn't always—

it's not always a curse though. It was for Sherman though, from the Seahawks. Remember he tore his ACL?

Yeah. I do remember that.

I do remember that. You know who we— you know who we want them to put on the COVID of Madden then is, uh, Matthew Stafford. That's who I want on the COVID of Madden.

Yes. Uh, St. Louis. I almost called him St. Louis. Los Angeles is looking good.

Oh yeah, trust me, people around here are not letting me, uh, miss that. Yeah, it's funny.

Yeah.

Okay. That, that kind of gives everybody an insight into that. I think the lesson is in, you know, just analyzing whether you're one of those people that is stuck trying to put as much weight on the spot you are and not change, or if you've built this flywheel that's a, you know, constantly improving machine where the processes, the people coming in, everything is constantly getting better. And most of the time, you know, the average service department in this country is barely breaking even, if not losing money, depending on what you look at. That's not, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Yeah. I think too, at the end of the day, the thing that I became was a teacher. That's really what I am. In fixing all of these stores. Like the, the thing that I learned is when you go out in the shop and you explain to the technicians how the financial statement works, it gets rid of all of these weird misconceptions. But I mean, in some of our stores, the, the advisors and the technicians know more about a financial statement than somebody running an actual dealership somewhere else. I mean, think about that. That's a crazy thing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it really is. Yeah, and I think when you're, when you're talking about, um, like the, the lesson of listening to your story and, uh, and like being stuck in your ways, uh, you know, like take, take inventory of, um, what your customers are saying. Like go look at your CSI scores, go look at your Google reviews, stand in the, in the, lane, you know, for the morning rush and like pay attention to the, the look on people's faces and like all, all of those things. And then, um, at the same time, look at your results and pay attention like after the month's over, um, how, how are you looking at those numbers? Are you, is it just trying to explain away the reason why they are? Like, or if it's a bad number, you know, taking ownership and figuring out how you're going to, you know, change it and, and strategize with it. But, um, you know, I forget where the quote come— comes from, but it's, it's one of my favorite ones that, um, when you're looking at your results, it's either strategy or criticism. And if it's criticism, and that's good.

When you're looking at your results, it's either strategy strategy or criticism.

Yeah, because if it's not strategy, then it's— you're stuck. Like, you're everything Chris just talked about. And, um, and, you know, so every time when the customer has that look on their face, when the service drive doesn't look the way it should, when your CSI score doesn't look the way it should, um, it's either strategy or it's criticism. And it turns out that once you push past that part, finding out how to make it a little bit better, um, comes into focus pretty quick. And then once you're to that point, you realize you need a system. You have to have something that you can duplicate over and over again. And just from a technician standpoint, it just always reminds me of, um, once I had to do something new as a technician on a BMW, I just wanted to do as many of them as I could, even though I wasn't good at them. 'Cause once you, you know, 'cause then I'm developing a system to get the outcome I want for that job, even though it's a hard job. And so then you realize you need a system for your customer experience. And, you know, to your point, you can get better and more efficient. The quality and the consistency and the efficiency of that process gets better and better, when you're trying to do it the, the same way, every customer, every time. Um, and so, you know, it just builds on each other and just like you going through that, that story, I mean, like it's a great illustration. Like, um, I don't know, just thinking about my journey and all the people I know in the industry and it, uh, it's, it's out there. So, um, yeah, it's fun. It's great, great hearing all that. It's funny, like, listening to you go through all this, I know your story, like, I feel like probably better, better than most. And there's been several things through these last few episodes where I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. Um, so it's been fun.

It's great. Yeah, agree. There's a lot I'm leaving out, like the divorce, the— jeez. Moving. Yeah, I thought about putting that stuff in, but it doesn't really— doesn't serve the purpose. And I don't know, there's always two sides.

Some bloopers reel or something.

There's two sides to every divorce. That— what's that other quote from Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Hoagie, where humans are the only— what?

Humans are the only creatures on Earth that find out find out what is good for them and go and do the opposite thing.

I love that. I have a little quote, uh, list in my phone, in my notes, and I'm going to add that. When looking at your results, it's either strategy or criticism. I love that. It's good. Okay, well, thanks everybody for hanging out with us, and, uh, hope we gave you some fun insights and some lessons, some, some stuff to think about. And we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 833-ASK-SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com. Now that's offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.