How To Avoid Socialism In The Service Drive | SDR #376

Welcome everybody to the big show. Welcome to Service Drive Revolution. We're going to teach you how to start a revolution in your service drive. At least that's the intention. That's the goal. Hoagie is here. Adam is here in the office. Once, usually once a month, we're all together here in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Hot.

The experiment? Yeah, it's as humid as Florida here right now.

Yeah, it's crazy. Just got off the plane and thought I just took off and landed back in Oklahoma. Didn't feel much different this time.

Yeah, it's kind of nutty. We are live on a bunch of different platforms and we have the ability to read your comments. So we're going to do a Q&A here like we did last week. So if you have any questions or anything you want to talk about, Go ahead and post it in the comments, and we'll be we'll be looking out for that. But happy to have that interaction. What we're talking about today, though, is how to avoid socialism in your service drive. So the episode we did last week was pretty popular, started some good conversations. So we want to talk about how do you avoid that? If it's coming, if socialism is coming, how do how do we avoid it strategically? What things can we do? To keep our business on the capitalist side of the coin, America capitalism, and not on the communism side of the coin. Yeah, that's how I see it.

Yeah, it's big big conversation. It last episode spurred a lot of questions for sure.

We should try to have one of those techs on.

Oh yeah, we should.

One of those commies.

Yeah, yeah.

Seeking to understand, but yeah, you are a commie.

Yeah, that's funny. Adam, uh, so Adam has a Kindle notebook. So it's so funny, we were getting ready to do this and, uh, Josh goes, uh, is that a Kindle?

Why?

What's wrong?

How, how have I— I tried to warn you.

I tried to tell you.

You tried to warn him not to bring a Kindle in here? So we literally— Adam, I'm not making this up. I'm not joking. We literally are making a piece for there that is an aquarium, a fish aquarium that we're going to fill with oil that looks like water, and we're going to put Kindles in there. Well, that stinks. We're collecting Kindles to put in there.

Please do not collect my notebook that I write notes on that happens to be branded Kindle in your fish tank with oil.

This feels a lot like, have you ever had somebody lecture you about child labor while they're holding their iPhone? Or wearing clothes from The Gap or whatever? It's kind of hard to avoid child labor in America with all the consumption. Like something, a pair of shoes, a shirt, it's pretty hard to avoid, right?

Yeah.

So it's that sort of thing is like—

In one way or another, something came or manufactured in China, a piece of it.

Okay. Well, if you look around this room, what is predominantly going on? You don't have to be super observant.

I'll help you. Books.

Yeah, books. What kind of books?

Lots of them, of every single sort of different time. Physical books.

What, what can never happen to those books?

Never be destroyed?

Oh no, they could be destroyed. Like, you could destroy them.

You could—

barring being destroyed, what could never happen to them? I don't know. You can't change them. You can't reprint them. There's a long list of changes that they've done to books.

Editions.

In the digital. Unapologetically, Amazon has changed books to either be politically correct or whatever it is, to give a different narrative, To change history, to change a narrative. And when you get a book on a Kindle, you don't own the book. You can't transfer. They can change it and you have no control whatsoever. So you could read a book one time and then it would be different the next time you read it. They can change the narrative, all of it. And they do it.

Without ever knowing.

Yes, they do it. So for political correctness, for changing history, or that's not a popular subject, whatever it is, they are living things that are constantly being observed and changed.

Hope they don't change my notes.

So item 1 in eliminating socialism from your service drive is ban Kindles.

Or use them as a notebook.

So that's why we're anti-Kindle. Look around. We like real books.

I, you know, I, I tried the reMarkable and didn't like it, but I do like the functionality of the notes. I will read on it.

I'll read a physical book. What about, you, you know that, uh, Apple makes a I did not like the way that this—

it's too, um, yeah, it's too glass.

Yeah, like, oh, it's like writing on glass.

That's just a screen cover.

Yeah, you can get a paper screen cover, but then that's it.

That's why that feels that way.

It's manufactured that way. I like it.

How does it feel to be in the, in the Apple ecosystem? Ecosystem. For, for anybody that doesn't know, Adam was fighting that for the longest time. He was Android forever, and then something happened, something changed.

What happened?

You can't connect with everybody in order to know what's going on.

You messing up a bunch of group messages?

Things just don't work. It's a different syncing. But yeah, I miss it, but it's all right.

It doesn't— it doesn't bother me when people have an Android. I don't— I can text them either way. I don't care if it's— I don't care about the color.

Yeah, see, that, that was probably the largest insight that I did not know was like such a big deal, that when I did go to an iPhone, all my friends were like, wait, did you get an iPhone? I'm like, yeah, like, okay. They're like, no, no, no, you're finally blue, or whatever. And I'm like, Okay. Like they made a bigger deal about it than I ever have. Did not—

Was it good or bad?

Well, they were like happy about it, but I'm like, you're making it a thing that like I didn't know was that big of a deal, but okay. Now we're blue versus green.

Yeah. It's all, it's an odd thing how, uh, how impactful Apple's made that. Like, and they say they fixed the group messaging thing, but No, they don't.

It's not in their interest yet. No, it's like saying BMW gives tech to independent shops.

It makes sense.

Right to repair.

Now, yeah, I'll say that things keep saying it's coming. They do work a little bit more seamlessly, just like printing and, and that nature of how it all talks to one another. It does have that.

Apple's easier?

In within its network. So I mean, that makes sense within its own framework and platform, things just seem to work better with the— with each other. So like getting like the headphones, earbuds, or whatever.

You have been converted a little bit. I'm happy to hear you talking that way.

I just need things to work.

I've— that for sure. That's the one— that's the reason why a lot of us went to Apple in the beginning is it just worked.

Me, that's 100%.

I do miss—

made me feel like an expert.

I do miss like more of the Microsoft stuff, but, uh, there's ways.

It's hard to figure that out.

We don't have time to talk about it.

20-something years ago, I, I missed Outlook. Breaking up with Outlook was hard for me in the beginning, and now I couldn't even imagine. I see people married to Outlook and I'm like, oh, you poor thing.

I feel like you just started a, uh, uh, first initial lyrics to a song. First broke up with Outlook.

Well, I mean, it's the same thing though. It's an ecosystem. You get it, you get into it. So should we go— should we just go right to how to avoid socialism, or should we talk about Southern Illinois?

The two might intersect quite nicely, actually. I don't know. Adam's from Southern Illinois, so I don't know that we have to make it—

Originally from Northern Illinois.

What's the name of that show? The YouTube channel?

Is it Rocca News, I think?

Rocca News. So there's this YouTube channel called Rocca News. That goes to old mining towns or old kind of forgotten about parts of the US, and they talk to people and they just, you know, kind of see what's going on there. So like West Virginia and all kinds of places, but one of them was southern Illinois.

Cairo. Cairo.

Cairo. Well, the Cairo one they haven't put up yet. So after I watched that one, I wanted to see it, and it's like, oh, that, that's coming out this week. Like, it's, uh, it's not out yet.

So I think it just did just go up.

It was like 5 hours. We just missed it. Yeah.

Oh, did you guys watch it?

Yeah, we watched it.

What is it like?

It's, it's similar, but it's, it's, it's just depressing because I remember going into Carbondale for school and we traveled in those areas and Metropolis. We'd go to the They talk about those places like the casino. I remember going to Shawnee National Forest. It's a beautiful part of the state and the country, but it's also when you think about the people and just trying to better understand of what happened. At some point in time, those river cities especially were thriving in industry. And I kind of look back, there's a lot of just, I mean, obviously being from Illinois, like Joliet's one of them that's trying to bounce back. St. Louis, I feel like East St. Louis has been bouncing back. They talked about that with Cairo being the middle. They—

what the—

not perception, but piece of it is kind of like Egypt, right? On the 2 rivers coming together, they were all industrial hubs.

They call it Little Egypt, right?

Yeah.

And, it's just sad that I feel like Okay, help me understand something in a sense, right? It's like, so most of those places, the economy was fed by coal.

Yes.

People that work in coal mines work really, really hard. It's not a great job. They're enduring all kinds of health problems. And they don't get paid that much. If you're building a factory or any sort of thing where you need workers that will work really hard, not complain about conditions, and work for a fair wage, I don't know what coal miners make.

Maybe at the time it was fair wage.

Maybe, but whatever. They'll work for a fair wage. Why aren't we putting factories in those places strategically? And then I guess the other question would be a lot of these factories tend to go by cities because you can't attract the talent if you're not next to a city. So even a lot of these AI farms and—

Yeah.

All that still tend to be close to some sort of city, Memphis or something, right?

In that way.

Because it just seems to me like if you had a, if you had a factory here in California and you're making, I don't know, mountain bikes or whatever it is, uh, yeah, stands for hunting in a tree. But I mean, there's so many places just making stuff around here, right?

Mm-hmm.

Clothes, whatever. Why wouldn't you put the factory there? You would have— you just have less competition for the employees. They work, they want opportunity.

That's the thing.

And you're feeding—

yeah.

What is it? Is it because we're just not next to cities and the whole world has really kind of moved to the city?

What do you think?

Well, I think just traveling all those areas and that documentary or Rockin' News, what it's highlighting, I've traveled a bunch around the Great Lakes area and the Rust Belt, and there's just these cities that are mid-sized cities and you can tell, and the Cairo episode was no exception to that, at one point in time it was booming. There's in these mid-sized towns that at one time were Chicago.

When you say one time, we're talking pre-World War II, right?

I thought they even gave back—

Uh, no, no. Yeah, I would, I would say post-World War II.

Yeah.

And, um, the— but it was a lot of manufacture. There was a lot of manufacturing and, um, and, you know, just these big buildings of different types of industry and, and things like that. And there's just these massive voids, like they're— it's just gone.

It got sucked up in some sort of vacuum. They feel like they're the forgotten people.

And then when you and I were driving around Indiana, sorry, when we were driving around Indiana, there's so many buildings that have just sunk into the ground. They just collapse and they're just left there.

Yeah. And I think—

Churches, everything.

To your point, when it came back, a lot of these cities that were 50,000, 60,000, maybe even 100,000 people now are 5,000 people. And there's just these massive voids of abandoned buildings and things like that. And I do think One thing I've read more than once is as manufacturing is coming back, there are a lot of those jobs coming back and they're not going back to those little to mid-sized towns because there's not 50,000 people there now. There's 2,500.

Yeah. Also, like, just think if you own a manufacturing place and let's just say you, you have 200 employees and you're making mountain bikes or whatever it is, you don't have the housing there in those areas anymore. Like, you can't just have 100 people show up and there's an apartment or a house You need people that are willing to invest in a lot of those different areas.

And I think that's—

So that's, that's what makes it impossible to come back is you don't have infrastructure, you don't have grocery stores.

That's like, I think we've talked about that offline quite a bit is when even when we're driving around is the first indicator how many retail stores like a local grocery or, or whatever deli store, and there's just not a lot in those areas. And the people in that show are saying like, we You know, to sum it up, we don't have any retail. There's not even any gas stations. Yeah, we used to have gas stations, but we don't have them.

And the food that's available to buy isn't great. And like, it's a—

No. And there's a lot of farming in that area. And it's just, uh, yeah, it's— but I do— the, the optimistic side of myself is when we do do these travels and see there are a lot of towns that could be considered forgotten, that some people are trying to go and reinvest into those smaller towns or slightly larger. And maybe there's a way to revitalize that. We've seen that even—

I think about how fun it would be to have a little GM dealership out there, Chevy dealer.

Just be a part of the community and help revitalize it.

Yeah.

There's a sense of community in there would be awesome to give back. I look at it as giving back.

I mean, I think about that in Washington where I grew up out there in the country, some of those little repair shops or dealerships, like, you know, you're selling 20 cars a month, 30 cars a month. It's not a big market, but your expenses and everything are in relation to that too.

Yeah.

But you know the people, you know the police, you know, you know everybody.

Yeah.

Like, it's that old— how do we, how do we bring back Main Street in that sense? Because those— when you look at those videos and Main Street is just decimated. Like, it's all boarded up.

Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's, uh, man, like I keep thinking—

Do you think we ever go back to that? Or is it too far gone?

I don't know. Like, uh, there, I, I think there's hope. I think, um—

Have you seen what Walmart did with the city they're based in?

Bentonville? Uh-uh.

It's just crazy. I mean, they invest tons of money. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You got the town square, you got all kinds of mountain biking, theaters, restaurants, everything.

That whole area is really nice. Northwest Arkansas, because of that, is, uh, yeah, there's a lot of really nice—

I grew up really fast too.

Yeah, I remember.

I mean, they have a— they have an art gallery there, everything.

Yeah. So where did— where does— I don't know, I'm just throwing this out there—

where did—

where does one start with some of those smaller—

You need a bunch of people sitting at a table. I've, I've been in on these meetings before, actually, when in redevelopment.

Yeah.

And literally, like, there's, there's, uh, there's a mayor There's a city planner, then there's a couple real estate developers, and then there's people that run the businesses. And so they have these formulas, and I talked to them extensively because I was in on it. They will put in things like some sort of club where there's live music. They will put a grocery store in, and they just have all these people that Hey, put your grocery store in. They give them free rent. So incentivize them. They're incentivized to be there. And then they start to build the apartments. And it's kind of a catch-22 is one of the things that happens. You can see it right down here in the part of LA we're in is all of these apartment buildings have retail on the bottom and there's no retail. And the way these guys that I experience for a couple years would say you got to put that in first. You got to put the retail and the grocery in first before you build the building, which seems counterintuitive, but the guys going in know that. So the grocery store owner knows that that's the plan. This is a 5-year plan, but by the end of 5 years, you're going to have 2,000 tenants in these 4 apartment buildings.

That does make sense because that's a lot of the things that are the gaps that they're missing in some of these shows. is that they don't have any of that retail. So you need to put the retail, the reason of why you want to live there, because some of these people have to travel probably well over 40 minutes to get gas.

The quarterback in this situation is the mayor, because the mayor is going out and getting people to come. And then he's saying, well, I got Hoagie, I got Adam, they're building these apartment buildings. We got this new— I watched this happen in Santa Ana. Where this guy put in a 2,000-person theater and started having all these first-rate acts come in, comedy, music, whatever. Then grocery stores, then buildings, bought buildings and redid them and got companies to come in and have their offices there, headquarters. So big companies too in these big industrial buildings, and it was all quarterbacked by a mayor.

That makes sense.

And then the mayor and the city planner worked together. It was tax incentives. They were very active. They have a brewery and an art scene. They had these kind of—

Attract more people as it starts going.

Well, an art school with then living for artists that have space for them to work and do their art. And you know, people with money want to come to where the art is. Like they were very aware of you got to go young. You want art, you want music, you want the young stuff to attract the older people. You don't attract the younger people with the older people, if that makes sense.

For like sustainability and growth to like yeah, in investment term yeah investment.

I mean I've I've learned that many in many scenarios. Like for example, when I took over Crevier. We marketed to the 7 Series buyer. So we were on ESPN, we were on the Golf Channel because that's how ownership thought. They loved it when they were at the country club and somebody come over and go, hey, I heard your commercial. Nobody ever graded commercials back then on how many cars did we sell. It was just kind of necessary branding. And I was like, no, I want to I want to be able to source car sales to this—

Investment.

Couple million dollars I'm spending on advertising, right? And so, I went young. I went Howard Stern, KISS FM, very, very young and started to sell 3 Series. And what I learned is we sold twice as many 7s when we were selling twice as many 3s. It wasn't the other way around. When I sold twice as many 7s, I sold less 3s. And so, you know, BMW used to— they don't really anymore because their, their, uh, models are confusing. But back then it was like literally the 3, you could get a 3 Series for $29,500, cloth interior, sunroof, and the payment was $399. And it was, it was cheaper in the cycle for the customer to buy that over a Honda Accord because it had maintenance. And so you could chip away at Honda, Toyota, you know, you deserve a BMW basically sort of a thing. And it worked. And then you sell more of the older stuff because people— like, I remember that with Mercedes all the time is I would be out socially and I would meet people and they'd be like, oh, I'm going to Fletcher Jones. I'm going to get a Mercedes. I'm like, you're too young. to be driving a Mercedes. And they'd be like, what? And I'm like, that's an old person car. What are you doing? And like, it works. Like, you could convert people, especially people that are vain. You know, the amount of plastic surgery and stuff that happens in Orange County.

Like, I can't be associated with that.

Yeah, you're, you're way too young to be driving that old car.

Yeah, you're right.

But going young. And so part of that thing is you got to build a young core That has art, has music, has a school. There's got to be some sort of school going on, grocery store, all of that. So there is a way, but it takes a village. The developer knows the grocery store guy that'll come in and lose money for 2 years.

Yeah.

It's a coordinated thing. And the mayor knows that this developer did this in New Mexico, I remember hearing that this developer did, I think, downtown Albuquerque or something. That was his— and he turned around downtown Albuquerque too. Same exact strategy. So the mayor went and found that guy and said, hey, I got this opportunity here. How can I help you make it happen? Sort of a thing. So it's very intentional. So you need a mayor that's out getting companies to come, and then you got to have housing for those You got to have some sort of entertainment. But in Southern Illinois, it's like you got hunting, you got outdoors, you got farming. You got a lot of stuff you can do.

Just got to capitalize on it.

Yeah. Somebody's got to intentionally do that. But to me, it seems like all of this movement towards manufacturing is still right outside of the cities. It's right outside of Phoenix, right outside of Dallas. Yeah, they're not putting it in those areas that need it the most.

Yeah.

And with the farms consolidating, it's just kind of a chase to the bottom.

Yeah, I think the most that I see is they just put up, uh, the solar farms. And I think that's what one of the, uh, people on the show was talking about, is that's all they're really seeing as far as big differences, the solar farms. But there should be more to be done. And it's not just Southern Illinois. It's like you said in the Rust Belt, all those rural areas.

Mm-hmm. For sure. For sure.

Okay, here's a question from Richard Devo, 1956. Richard's older than me.

Oh yeah. So here my dad was born.

So this could be your dad. Imagine your dad is asking you this question.

Okay.

Got it.

How should we approach technician minimum standards? Your dad would never ask this question. How should we approach technician minimum standards if we have too many technicians, too few appointments, and advisors with an average wildcard sales— I don't know what that means— and advisors with an average wildcard sales percentage?

So technician minimum standards, like, uh, there is a, there is a piece of this, and this is, this kind of goes into one of the things we're going to talk about is, uh, guarantee opportunity, not pay. So This kind of feeds into this a little bit. And you do have to kind of start upfront with setting the advisors up for success, putting in systems that'll allow them every customer, every time to offer what's due on that vehicle. It is a thing where if your advisors, if the pay plans, all of it, right? It's not just one thing, it's several. And if you're going to be effective, if you're going to keep socialism out of the service drive, kind of like you were talking about with these towns, it's not one thing, it's a lot. It's going to be one person that puts that system together and executes it to bring that town back to life. The service department's no different. You're going to have to make the decision that several of these things have to happen. So one is you can't have service advisor pay plans that are too complicated and you can't reward mediocre service advisor performance. Most service advisor pay plans, they say, okay, we want the advisor to make this much money, they're outputting this much right now, and they build some hodgepodge pay plan that rewards mediocrity. And most of the time when I get this type of question, what I'm going to find almost every time is really low hours per RO. The warranty to customer pay is going to be 80% warranty and 20% customer pay or something like that, which just means we're Also not telling customers what their car needs. And those pay plans a lot of time allow the advisor to make a pretty decent living off of just writing warranty. And if all those things are happening, it's definitely the case where that makes it harder to hold the technician accountable. And there is a valid argument to be made for a technician If they're getting 80% warranty and no customer pay to kind of offset that. Now, some of that's starting to right-size. I don't know. I think it's like 15 or 16 states, maybe even more now, have the state legislation now where it's 1.5 times warranty pay now has to be 1.5 times. So that's going to start right-sizing it. But Part of the undercurrent that's happening right now where I promise your technicians are talking about at one point in time or another going together and getting the industry changed to hourly. That conversation's happening all over social media, all over your shops. But what they really want is to know that they have the opportunity to make a decent paycheck. They don't feel like it's fair. Yeah, they don't feel like it's fair and they want the opportunity. And with these different things that have happened, it doesn't make sense that a recall can come out and pay 1.1 hours and 6 months later it pay 0.3. And that stuff's happened over and over and over. Over again, and the industry has just kind of absorbed it. And the right outlook as a tech, Chris said it last episode when we were talking about this, the hard part about navigating all of this is both sides are right and both sides are wrong.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And so it makes it hard to navigate this line. So his question, the hard part about that is, yeah, you do need to have minimum requirements for the technicians. And yes, we got to go up front and You got to create systems and standards upfront for the advisors. And so, a couple things I would pay attention to is I would look at your pay plan and does it make sense? Is it easy for me as the advisor? Do I need you to calculate my wash sheet or can I check at the end of the month and know what I made? If it's not that simple, it's too much. And it is something where if the advisors aren't performing, it does hurt the techs. There's no doubt about it. And one thing we're always asking high-performing advisors when we're interviewing is how many techs will follow them. And the answer is always, oh, I don't know, at least 2, probably more. Yeah, 2 or 3.

And so you have to understand that, you know, you know, you have a good advisor when that's the answer.

Yeah.

Yeah. I can't think of a time where an advisor said that and it became true that they weren't like a top performer.

Yeah.

Because techs follow the advisor.

Yeah.

So invariably, like, let's just unpack that a little bit for a second, is usually that advisor takes care of their techs. Like they get them paid for the stuff they should get paid. You know, they're, they're calling on and they're just doing all the stuff that an advisor is supposed to do. And unfortunately, it's, it's a low bar.

Yeah. Yeah. And when, when, uh, the two— the thing also when you have a high-performing advisor is if, uh, if we get clipped on one and we take care of a customer or something comes up or, or whatever, if that advisor comes to you and asks you to You know, take care of this one or whatever. When you know they have that ability and they're performing, you don't worry about that one, right? You know, though, they got it covered, that there's more work coming, that you're going to get your fair share.

Get more opportunities.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think too, when we talk about both sides are right in this scenario, is if you have a shop full of 12 techs, Just on average, how many of those 12 are high-performing flat rate techs? 2 or 3?

Yeah.

So you're talking about the majority of them are the ones that aren't looking to figure out how to flag more. They're looking for something a little more entitled.

Yeah.

Just like in any sort of capitalist environment, There's always a, there's more people making, there's less people making money at the top than there are people not making money at the bottom.

Yep.

It's just how it works, right? In a hierarchy in that sense. Um, sorry about this. Our, our little feed here keeps going down, but, um, so, but the, the question, okay, I don't know if we answered this question. How should we approach technician minimum standards if we have too many techs? Well, I mean, you would lose the— you would probably lose a couple on that, and maybe that's what should happen. Yeah, if you have too many.

Yeah, I'm not running into too many techs too often.

No, these days. And the other thing is you could try to go out and get work. Yeah, you could mark— it's expensive, but you could learn marketing and learn how, you know, learn social media and go, go at the independents. Yeah, our advisors, okay. So this question from Tim Banks, why do you think the dealers are pushing for socialism?

I don't think the dealers are, the technicians are.

Yeah, Tim, you would have to clarify because I'm not aware of any dealers wanting that. I haven't been in a conversation where the dealers were pushing for that.

I think it's more the technicians are kind of forming where it's not the fair of the opportunity, thinking that it's better to go to an hourly versus a flat rate.

I mean, there is a play with people that understand power and power dynamics where socialism really just puts a handful of people at the top and they're the ones that get rich. So if you wanted a system where you had no competition, and you could really control things. Socialism is a pretty good thing for a dictator, you know, tyrant leader. That's usually how it ends up.

Yeah, that's true.

And I don't think dealers want that. They want to drive that competition. They want the teams to be able to perform at their, their best.

Well, I think it's just ingrained in us.

Yeah, yeah.

That The car business, the reason why I got in the car business was because it was an industry where I didn't have to have a master's degree or a college degree, and I could literally make as much money as I wanted on my performance. I was banking on myself.

Yeah.

And that's a great place to be. There aren't a lot of industries like that. A lot of industries, the cost of entry is an education, who your parents are. Nobody's hiring me at Merrill Lynch.

Right. Yeah.

But if I'd gone to Harvard and I had the right parents, I'd have a choice of which bank I wanted to work for. So the thing about automotive, it's just ingrained in us that it's about performance and self-agency. And sales is definitely that way. You can be a salesman And sell as many cars as you want, work as hard, network as much as you want. Like, yeah, it's up to you. You're kind of running your own business inside of a business.

You're in charge of your own destiny.

Yeah.

If you're an advisor, tech salesperson. But we do have that, like, in every shop there's the top 1, 2, or 3, and then we have everything else below. And they're not trying to— how do we inspire them to try to figure out how to do more?

Yeah.

Versus wanting some sort of entitlement. And then that falls on us, the opportunity that's presented, the amount of care and coaching and time that's invested in them, the facility, the career path. They got to see a career path. They got to see that if I do these things, you can't really— those 2 or 3 at the top, they'll figure it out no matter what. There's just certain people that you drop them into a scenario and they will figure it out.

Yeah.

The rest of them kind of have to be led there. They have to be— they have to see proof of it over and over again. They have to believe that they can become a foreman someday. Yeah, that sort of thing, right? One of the number one reasons why techs quit in the beginning is they didn't believe that they would ever be able to be a shop foreman because that foreman's 45 and he's going to be there forever. They don't see that career path. And so, for our clients that have groups that are expanding, it's a great way to create a bench is to say, well, you might not be the foreman here, but we're always buying dealerships and there's opportunity in the future.

Yeah. I think the technician pathway is an important An important piece of that and showing them what the next steps are. And just having an understanding of how much the front and back work together in service. And I would just double down on understanding that it's a throughput machine, and so it has to have a system to be able to get the outcomes. That you want. And it's an odd thing. Like, you know, like an example that's been coming up a lot lately is it's going around right now where we want to look at ASR closing percentages or closing percentages off of multipoints. And you'll see some pretty high ones here and there. And it can be confusing at first because they'll have a high closing percentage and a low Low hours per RO. And you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. And then you start going and you're kicking over some of these multipoints and the multipoints are garbage or they're nonexistent or they're pencil. You'll have an all green multipoint on a 95,000-mile car or something like that. And so you have technicians that are not doing multipoints or not doing them very well, And then if you're, as a technician, if you don't have the understanding that me not doing a good job with my multipoints or not doing them at all, it makes the advisor look good in a way. Like, because if you're only offering what that car came in for or offering the sure bet and not giving a good inspection, 100%. There's no opportunity to close on. And so you just send up the 1 or 2 things that you think The customer is likely to buy. The advisor closes those 2 things.

They look 100%.

And so if I, as a tech, if I offer $300 and the advisor closes 100% of it, that's 100% closing percentage. And this closing percentage is like outweighing for whatever, a lot of other standard metrics. 'Cause, you know, 'cause we're the auto industry and we like to chase new shiny things and metrics. Another good thing. But it's a weird thing where I'd much rather have the advisor with 50% closing percentage, on $1,500 than 100% closing percentage on $300 offered on the multipoint, right? And it's an odd thing that's kind of happening.

Like, so, you know, um, that's always an outcome though of when the manufacturers and the dealers go to these 20-group meetings and they're like sitting around. I mean, I went through this with, uh, with, um, CRMs, right? Like everybody had a CRM, but nobody knew what to do with it. Like, yeah, and nobody's sales went up. They were just paying $2,000 a month for a CRM in the box. And, um, it's the same thing with these digital inspections, is like the managers are more concerned about looking good on a report than they are actually making more money.

Yeah.

And you got to be willing to tell the truth and look bad on a report in order to get better.

Yeah.

And that's just the nature of Of how things work.

And the others are all your show.

The other thing I was going to say about how to avoid it is paying attention at hiring. I think that this sort of climate makes you have to be more disciplined in your hiring and not take chances. If there's a technician that has a track record of flagging a lot of hours, And you can prove that, you're, you know, you're much safer than the guy who you just like them in the interview and they seem like a tech and they have all their, they have all their training or whatever for Infiniti or whatever brand you're hiring for versus like, are they assassins? Like, are they, are they one of those ones you can drop into a stall and they, they figure out how to make hours?

Yeah.

You're going to have to be more disciplined in that way.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't—

Isn't it funny too, just on a side note, is the idea of this sort of socialism or unionization and all of that in a market where the technicians can name their price. Yeah, that's how confused everybody is. Yeah, it's like the technicians ultimately have the control, but what they're saying is, no, we don't want to really— we don't want to really have to perform in a way. We want— we want this— this set of rules when they could name their price. Yeah, I mean, there's techs out there making $100 an hour right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's funny because, uh, I remember being in shops and they're like, well, that's why they put, uh, wheels on the toolbox for a reason. They can kind of name that price, especially Especially if you're, if you're worth it. I just keep going back to a few weeks ago when we had that interview with the technician and he was wanting to leave from an auto dealer to a potential truck dealer and trying to go chasing away from the flat to the hourly thing. It's like, no, no, like you still need targets. Like think in the mindset of flat rate that you want to beat that time so you can bring home more money.

Yeah.

Like you have that opportunity. I still feel that from, from our side in an industry, whether it's just us trying to impact that, it's our job to show them that pathway and able to make that opportunity. That's what we can do on our part.

The other part that we're missing too in this is we don't have enough young, fresh faces coming in because the vocational thing, like all these kids that have these student loans to, you know, for political science or whatever it is, They'd be much better off working on cars or tractors or trucks or something.

Go back to what you said as far as in some of these forgotten towns, there needs to be more of a planning, strategic plan to reinvest in giving the opportunities with the vocationals. I think people are trying to get back into that, but it still needs to be at a faster pace because there's a lot more people. I mean, I remember going into the industry and that's what the mantra was then and it still is. It always— I think it really always will be, is that there's so many more people leaving the industry than going into the industry. And I blame that on us.

Yeah, right.

100%. For sure.

Yeah.

A lot of people are just bypassing the— I know several successful technician programs now and dealer groups are just bypassing the technical schools and going into the high school themselves. There's been just a bad— just like dealers have a hard time finding techs and there's 8 or 9 leaving the field for every 1 coming in, and we could go through all that. A lot of the technical schools have been having to close a lot of locations because enrollment is also down of people wanting to go into these things.

Yeah.

And that's probably something to talk about because you want to show the pathway, you want to show the opportunity, but it's okay with them also to be honest that, hey, if you want to work hard and apply yourself, the first couple years of being a tech is rough. There's a lot to figure out.

Well, it's clear expectations then, right?

Yeah. It's a big concept to figure out how to fix a car. It really is. It's not an easy thing. Or more people would do it. But if you embrace that complexity, if you apply yourself, you can make a great living doing it. Like Chris said, now you can name your price. But the way the trade schools approach going into these high schools for the last 40 years is they go into a high school and they're like, hey, fixing a car is like playing video games. You just get on a tablet and it tells you what's wrong with it, and you can make $1 million a year.

You like playing with electronics and putting things in your hands?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then the kid goes to technical school.

Nothing like that.

Works on a training aid that's been taken apart 80,000 times and then gets to the dealership or— Couldn't diagnose his way out of a wet paper sack. And then—

Basic electrical diag.

Yeah.

That's the— that's one of the biggest things that like, oh man.

What's happening successful now is some people are just going straight to the thing and going into the high schools themselves and creating their own programs and saying, hey, we'll Come work here, we'll send you here, something to that effect.

I think that's the ones that want that slight edge is they have to go back. We talk about communities, go in and do the research or implement a vocational program in your high school. Like, I mean, that's a longer-term plan, but that's where, in my experience, that's what some, some dealers are doing and some manufacturers are looking at that. But it takes some planning, it takes some investment. But yeah, I mean, if we just sit here and wait, and like, that's the thing, the enrollment piece, the priorities are a little bit wrong in a lot of these tech schools. Like, I've been in one and then they also like, they change, they want the enrollment. It's just collecting. I get it, it's a business model, but at the end of the day, we won't have anybody if we don't invest in it.

I mean, and there's a bunch of people that could be driving this, right? Like, I've always thought that if I was running a union, The first thing I would do is start a vocational school to grow my own techs. If I can go to a dealership and I can say, hey, my techs run at whatever efficiency, I can provide you with as many techs as you need. Now this is a fair thing for both sides, right? And the manufacturers try to do it as much as they can. There's a couple manufacturers that are pretty good at supporting vocational schools, but there has to already be one there that's well ran for them to engage in that sort of thing. So it's hard in that way. And the NADA's not doing it to a degree. They have certain things, but it's not really super effective. So who does it? Who's doing it? Because it doesn't feel like anybody's really taking the lead in that way. There's pockets. I mean, there's still pockets we run into where there's a high school that has an automotive program.

Yeah. And I think the dealers that are doing it successfully, it's kind of going back to what you were talking about where if the— I would love nothing more for the dealers to survive into the future as part of the community. And I think that can be A piece of it can be having programs with the high schools in their community to facilitate something where they can come there and work and see the pathway.

They're the fabric of the community. Double down on it.

Yeah. But we've got to be honest with them coming in what it is. And that also, when that's happening and there's those conversations and that pathway, the other thing you start to realize also, Is that now all of a sudden some of those baby boomer techs that are approaching retirement, when you've had those conversations and the pathway and there's an understanding of what the job is and what the opportunity is, it changes the incoming technician a little bit. And there's less, I don't know, what's the thing that happens between the older techs and the younger techs? Resentment is maybe the word.

Resistance.

Yeah, like the, the— this guy doesn't want to even begin to understand the, the kid doing a TikTok dance over in his stall. He doesn't even want to begin to understand that, and let alone—

I got— I think, let alone, I don't want to understand that.

He doesn't want to try to teach him how to diagnose.

Meanwhile, those are the guys Hoagie's watching.

Oh man, my TikTok game is so good, you wouldn't believe it if you saw.

I'm not on TikTok. I feel like I get dumber when I look at TikTok.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, it's the same thing with Instagram.

It is. It's a waste of space.

But would you, when you were younger, would you have been one of the techs TikToking in your drive, in your stall?

When I was younger? What do you mean?

I TikTok younger than you are now.

I TikTok in my stall all the time.

Really?

No, I don't have TikTok.

Would you have been though?

That's the question.

25-year-old Hoagie. When did you get married?

22.

21-year-old Hoagie?

I don't think so. I don't think so. I was, uh, um, I think I've got younger in that regard. I was a pretty old soul when I was, uh, when I was younger.

So I don't, I don't think you're, you're closer to dancing on TikTok now than you were when you were 21?

1,000%. Part of that's your fault, I think. You made me younger.

What are you blaming me? I'm not encouraging people to dance on TikTok.

No, but I'm way more open to trying new things and trying different things to be more effective. You heard it here, folks.

Coach Oklahoma Smoke Show will now have a TikTok.

Yes.

That's funny.

Okay. Well, yeah, the conversation of social— I would love to get a couple of those texts on and talk to you.

Yeah, we should.

Like you said, it's both sides.

Yeah. And we just want to understand it.

Yeah.

Well, it just kind of reminds me a little of how much consumers and the population has changed and our industry stayed the same and it has to evolve. And that's really what it is more than anything is it's got to evolve, but we just kind of keep doing things the same way, expecting it to come to us, which it did forever. For a long time, car dealerships could survive by not caring about people, not having good systems, not really having business acumen, and you just can't do that anymore. You have to be better.

You got to be good.

The market won't bear it.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting too. I wouldn't buy stock in any of these public companies. I don't think we're too far from them dumping stores.

It's happening. There's little signs of it already, for sure.

And that brings us back to let's have some local people buy the dealerships and be a part of the community. We have a lot of clients that I would love to see grow and be a bigger part of the community.

Got good roots.

Yeah. Good acumen. Well, thanks everybody for hanging out with us. We will see you again next week on Service Drive Revolution. Have a good week. I know from experience that a lot of our dealers owners won't invest in training for fixed ops, but eight service managers in our coaching group have been promoted to general managers. Something that doesn't happen enough in our industry.

Proof that.

But when you're given the right tools and the right mentorship, you can do amazing things. And I'd like to personally invite you to something that should exist already, but unfortunately it doesn't. And that's a live fixed ops academy, a mentorship, a community. But what it really is, is a service drive revolution. Anybody can afford it. Anybody that wants to invest in themselves, we're going to teach what we know about running a healthy fixed ops service Our average coaching client performs well above the industry average, and a handful of them are in a league completely their own. In fact, if I told you their numbers, you wouldn't even believe it, they're so good.