Using Humor to Connect with Customers ft. Andrew Tarvin (Service Drive Revolution)

Foreign.

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. We have an exciting show for you today. We have a special special guest, and we're going to talk about how you connect with customers using humor. Welcome, everybody. Welcome Andrew Tarvin to the show, a friend of the show. Hello, Andrew. So Andrew spoke at our top Dog event. We've had him on some coaching meetings and during COVID One of the highlights of our Covid experience, and I think Christian would agree with this, right, Christian? Was Andrew coaching all of our coaches and then them doing for the whole company via Zoom, doing standup, which was unbelievable because some of our coaches are more introverted. And it was incredible what you pulled out of everybody. I was pleasantly surprised and blown away.

Yeah, no, I mean, they all did a fantastic job. I just, you know, created the framework and they filled in kind of the humor and funny, and I just kind of tweaked it a little bit. No, but we had a great time. That's been one of my highlights of the COVID experience as well, because I will admit that group, more so than a lot of others, did particularly well. They, like, you know, latched onto it. They're willing to give it a go, to give it a try. And that's kind of what you need, is you need that willingness to be like, all right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be confident about this thing that I'm gonna try. And they rocked it.

Yeah, you were a really good coach. And then on the. On the side, you've. You've worked with Christian too. And if it was not for Covid, you'd be doing standup right now, right, Christian?

I would like to think so. I'm pretty confident, and I'm constantly working at it. The one thing I got from Drew is that. That it's always a work in. You get an opportunity to throw out a little bit of a set, or you get that feedback from people and you start to learn what's funny and what's not. But the cool thing is that it's always a work in process, but you got to start somewhere.

Yeah. There's nothing more contagious and endearing and fun than humor. Nothing bonds you with somebody as easily is humor.

Right.

Even just seeing somebody laugh makes you want to laugh or seeing somebody smile makes you want to smile. But there's nothing that pulls you in more. And it's the easiest way to endear customers and build trust is being able to make them laugh. And you really have a system. Like, it's incredible how easy things are once you understand A system, right? Christianity. I was telling Christian this. This story, and I asked him on Monday, I'm like, I think I have this story for. For ownership. And I'm always blown away by Jocko's story in his book Extreme Ownership. Have you read that book, Andrew? So, yeah, he has a story in there about, you know, how to be a leader. You have to own every aspect of the result. And basically, you walk away from the first couple chapter of chapters of his book just going, man, I'm a wimp. Like, these guys are like, it's life and death and the Navy seals, and they're out there, like, you know, putting their lives on the line. And we're just, you know, this is just business. Like, we don't die if we mess this up. Like, we might be broke, maybe we're homeless, but we're not going to die. We get another shot at it.

Right?

And so I think I came. I have a good story for that, and I think I came up with an opener for it. And I ran it by Christian, and he just chopped it up and effortlessly fed it back to me in a couple hours. It was pretty cool.

Well, and that, I think, speaks to kind of the testament to one, the work that Christian has been putting in. Like you said, it is something that you work at. It's a skill you get better at by doing just like riding a bike or writing or customer service or whatever. Right. It's something that you get better through the repetition. But when you have a framework or a structure, it actually makes things easier. Right. Like, it doesn't take away from the creative process. It just makes the creative process a little bit easier. And you're always going to tweak. Like, you might do some type of structured thing and be like, okay, well, that got me started. But actually I'm going to change the format or I'm going to evolve it from there, but at least it gives you a place to start from. And that's the nerd in me, that's the engineer in me. That's like, you know, I love taking things apart. So it's like, okay, if we can take a clock apart, if we can take a computer apart, can we take humor apart? Can we kind of like parse it and see what works? Doesn't work, why does it work, why doesn't it work, etc. And it's. It's like a math problem almost, in a way. Like, I think of comedy is almost like math with words. So for me, I geek out about it.

Yeah. And I Mean, that's our job as teachers, right? Is, like, to take the complicated and make it simple for people to be able to understand and then. And then apply it. So, Christian, I would be curious. Your biggest takeaway from. From our time with Andrew, and maybe your time, too, because you spent a little bit more. But I'll tell you, my biggest takeaway, Drew, was that it all starts with the way you look at things and pay attention to things. And when we were going through your training, one of the things that you were teaching us was that humor is in the way you look at it. And you started to see things you wouldn't have seen before you started to pay attention, or I started to pay attention to things I wouldn't have paid attention to. And it just got easier just because of the way that I looked at things, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. It all starts with that kind of that sense of humor, that. That perspective on the world. Like, it's. It's the things that you find interesting. Like, I don't know if people. Like, when watching videos and stuff, if you're on a zoom call, I'm constantly playing the, like, zoom game of, like, what's in that person's background, right? So, like, as soon as we've joined, I'm, like, looking at Chris's background, and it's like, all right, that's a fantastic orange velvet chair. Like, how smooth that must be to sit in, right? So I'm thinking about that. I'm looking at the books on the shelf. Like, I wonder what the best book on that shelf is, which one's good, et cetera. I'm looking at Christian's background, and I'm like, okay, that's clearly the bottom of a fighter jet, but in some ways, it's like that missile kind of looks like something else. So I'm like, it's kind of a little bit weird, that.

Female, right?

Like, female top. Like, what's. I don't know if there's a word. Phallic that's also.

Oh, you see? Boobs.

Niplish is maybe. I don't know. But, like, you kind of see. So it's just like. And that, to me, is so appropriate for Christian based on how. How I met him. Like, whatever. But, like, you play those types of. Like, this perspective game of what's just a little bit different, and that's where it all starts. It's all what's. What's interesting to you, what makes you go, like, huh? Why is that like that? And that develops your sense of humor. And from that sense of humor, you develop your like, ability to humor the jokes that you think of. But you see this in stand up comedians, right? Like, you know, I love Eddie Izard, but his sense of humor is very different than say Chris Rock, who is also great, which is very different than Dave Chappelle, who is great, which is very different than Ali Wong, which is very different than Tigar. Like they all have their specific take or view on the world. And that's where humor starts. Is what you find interesting or what you find not even necessarily funny, but what you're just curious about. What makes you go, huh?

Yeah, it, it, yeah, it changed the way I looked at things. I started paying attention more, I guess. What was your biggest takeaway? Christian?

Very similar. So I thought that the way that I would describe it this is that I became more enriched in life and things have a little bit more depth and a little more meaning. And with that observation and trying to like just see the funny and regular every day, it ended up making life a little bit more enjoyable. So I'm actually, I'm happy. I'm like laughing and smiling down the street and like, you know, like I saw the weirdest thing yesterday when I was walking to work and like normally it would be like the worst thing in the world, but like.

Somebody shooting up heroin is funny.

And it was great. It was a great story. Like that's, you don't get to see that kind of stuff every day. So it was, it was a welcome to New York. But yeah, speaking of structure, I was gonna do this, this book and it was an all almond diet. But that's just nuts.

Would you describe his style? Andrew's more like Rodney Dangerfield.

Like Christians, it's a more confident Rodney Dangerfield. Because Rodney Dangerfield is very much like, I get that. I get no respect and everything is like, you know, self deprecating. It's very self deprecating and all that. Like, you know, I think he has a joke that's unlike when I was born. My, you know, the, the doctor, you know, slapped me on behind because I was crying and then slapped me in the face because I was ugly or something like that. It's very, very self deprecating. I think Christians is a little bit more confident than that. But no, I think it's a great sense of humor. I still think about, and this is the value, like you said, humor allows you to connect with people. It creates bigger connections. Because I still think about one of the things that Christian was working on when we were working together was Going to the grocery store and like, the fact that you're wearing a mask now, you can't, like, you can't separate the bag. So now every time I'm in the grocery store, I think of Christian when I'm trying to separate those bags. Because this humor that he articulate and you're like, oh, my God, you're so, so right. So it's a great way to connect. And what's great about it too is like, sometimes that connection happens even when you're no longer in the room because you're like, oh, that's such a funny thing. Next time I experience that thing that he talked about, like, I guess the next time I see someone shooting heroin, I'll think of Christian as well. Hopefully that's not too common of a thing, but. Right. It creates that connection. And so it's a great, you know, he, he has great observational humor as well.

Yeah, he's. He's for a long, for, you know, as long as I've known him, he's one of the funniest people that I, that I know. But it's interesting to see him with structure. Like, the change is very interesting because he's always been funny. Right. He's naturally funny, but there's a difference. And I think I saw an interview once with Louis ck I think it was Chris Rock and maybe Seinfeld and.

Somebody else, Ricky Gervais. HBO called Talking funny or something like that. It's a fantastic special. Yeah.

And they were talking about how they have friends that when they're like hanging out, playing poker or whatever, can like literally have them in stitches, but they step up in front of a microphone and they're not funny anymore. Like, it's a different art. To be able to do it in front of an audience and bend a room is completely different than just being funny. And I've kind of seen that evolution with Christian where he, he could do it reactively. He was just naturally funny, but now he can apply it. He can, he can apply it to stories and to lessons and things like that. So I think, you know, it's awesome. Like, it's fun, it's fun to watch.

And it's a great thing to recognize is that you don't have to be a stand up comedian to be funny. You don't have to do stand up to use humor to, you know, build better relationships with your clients or make people laugh, etc, but you can learn from them if you want to. Right. It can help you make it even a little bit stronger. And so, yeah, there's a difference between conversational humor and presentational humor and what you would do in a comedy club versus what you would do in, you know, an office setting, etc. But those techniques can meld together in that one, especially as it becomes second nature. So, like, you know, when you first start to learn them, it's like, okay, the comic triple. It's like, okay, very specific and rigorous and all that. And then as you ingrain that into your behavior and how you speak it, you just start to naturally start to speak that way. And I don't know, Christian, if you're starting to recognize that as well, I'm getting.

I'm not as fast as you are at it and recognizing it. But when. When Chris told me that story yesterday, I immediately thought, we can attach a comic triple to this thing and exaggerate it and make it a bigger deal. I almost want to tell it, but I know that we can't. But. But it's interesting how you do start to think in threes and sixes and nines. I guess, like, you start to go into the multiples and everything. But, yeah, the thing that's really impressive is that not only do you have that system for the. Creating the humor, your ability to apply it at the right situations, especially when I'm thinking about clients. Right. And if we're in a service department, we're dealing with a client, like, how do we use that humor to break the ice and everything? And your system identifies those opportunities to quickly, like, respond to that. And that's what I really, really like about what you do, is that you can apply it to the business world really easily.

Christian, how could we give our listeners some sort of tool to take away? Like, could we. Could we come up with a couple things that advisors could say to customers? Or what do you think? What could we do here and use Andrew to help us come up with something that they can use?

Yeah. What I would say the best thing maybe, is to give Drew a scenario.

So let's say that we're a service advisor going up to a client that pulls their car, and it's in a minivan, and it's got, like, dents and dings, and there's six kids pouring out of it and everything like that. And you can see that, like, the mother has, like, the stress of having six or seven kids, and, like, the last thing in the world she wants to do is be in front of you taking care of a car and everything like that. In my experience as a service advisor, and this Was a long time ago. Like, my thing was, is I was gonna figure something out to say to open that up that was gonna make that person immediately laugh and be like, okay, so it's, it's alright that I've got six people dangling from the ceiling in the minivan, right? So now like knowing you, is that I feel like there's probably a system like how do you start to identify something and then what's the right amount of humor to inject into it?

Yeah, well, and it's a great question. It starts with what we focus on is kind of what, what's your goal in that situation? And so like you said, your goal in this situation is to essentially call the moment, what we call in comedy call the moment where you're, you're calling out something that everyone is able to recognize. The equivalent of this in a comedy club is if you're performing and someone kind of drops a plate, like a server drops something and a bunch of glass shatters everywhere. As a comedian, you kind of have to address that because if you don't, people are going to worry the entire time. They're going to be like, did they hear that? Or is someone going to step on it and break or whatever. So you almost want to call the moment. It doesn't have to be, you know, the perfect joke in the world, but in a comedy club, someone drops that, you might be like, see, even the server agreed with that joke, or the server even thought that was hysterical. And so in this moment, by calling it, by addressing it high level and not making it a big deal, you're going to make that person more at ease. And so I think in that situation, you know, coming up or something like that.

There'S a couple of ways that you could, could go with it. I think you could go the, the direction of like, wait, only six kids were like, you don't have like nine. This is easy, right? Super easy. Like I was expecting an entire soccer team to jump out of there, but you only got half the team. You get a basketball team that's way easier to deal with. Like basketball team plus a six man, what are you, the Toronto Raptors? Like is who is this coming off the bench? Like so like that type of humor there of like making it not as big of a deal at all. You can.

Frame it in like a positive way like, or focus it back kind of like on yourself as well. Or a pre quote unquote previous person. It's like if you don't worry, like this is no problem whatsoever. We had A clown car come in here one day, 87 people inside. 87, right. So you go that exaggerated route, it's clearly a joke that's coming out. You make them laugh a little bit and you're putting them at ease. What you probably don't want to do in that situation, right, because humor can be used to build up, it can also be used as a negative is you wouldn't want to punch down what we call punching down. In that scenario where you're making fun of someone a little bit lower status, you want it wanted to be like what, six kids in a car? Why don't you can't afford like two cars to drive them around. Where's your nanny to take care of this person, right? So you don't want to necessarily go that route where they're going to feel bad about the situation. But that's kind of that instinct. And what's interesting is, and comedians do this all the time is you can prepare for scenarios, right? Because a lot of times things like, oh, how do you get that witty in the moment? Or if you go and you see a stand up comedian and they like do some crowd work and they immediately react to something like how did they know that was going to happen? They didn't, but they can plan for it, right? As a comedian, I know that at some point in my career the microphone is going to go out on me. I know at some point someone is going to drop a tray of dishes. I know at some point someone is going to heckle. I know at some point there's not going to be any laughs. So I can start to pre plan for some of those things. And as a, as an individual you can think, this is why like having a humor notebook is so valuable as you can think about, okay, what are the scenarios that happen day to day where I should maybe have something ready just in case it happens. And one of those things is like, okay, what should I do if someone comes in and they look really stressed out about the car? What are like three lines that I could go to? Okay, this line about like what this is no problem, clown car. That's one line. If they're stressed out but they're by themselves, what's another line that I could say where it's like, listen, I know it's been a, luckily you're out of traffic here, right? If you're in the LA area, look, your car is stopped, but at least you're out of traffic here. You can go and like, you know, relax a little bit, go for a Walk or whatever, like whatever. Those lines are pre planned. Then you have them in your back pocket to bring up. Because the beautiful thing is, like, it's probably not going to be the same person immediately over and over again. So you can use that line multiple times and still get a good positive result from it.

Yeah, that's. That's one thing too. You taught us is to keep, like, I do it in my notes and my phone. But do you do that, Christian, where you keep a little log of what works every day? So you try things. So read us some of the ones that are in your. In your notes.

Oh, gosh.

Only the appropriate ones.

Oh, that's a very intimate. I'm gonna bring up my humor. So to give a little bit of context for the people listening, Humor notebook is basically a repository for anytime you have like that funny idea or that crazy thing that you see, it goes in the notebook. So like, Christian probably wrote down, saw someone doing heroin right down in that notebook or the bag thing that we talked about earlier. Right. So you just write it down. And then that way later, if you want to sit down to like actually write or create comedy, you have a spot to go to. The other thing that you can do is you can write down prompts for later. So if you're like, oh, someone came in today, they had six people in the van. What could I have said? Maybe you didn't come up with it in the moment, but by reflecting on it. So what we say is reflection on the past leads to action in the future.

I'm going to write that down.

Reflection on the past leads action in the future. And so by reviewing what happened and. Or didn't happen, the next time that scenario comes up, you're more. You're better prepared or better equipped to handle it because you've thought about, okay, what would be the ideal scenario of what I could do? So, yeah. You have anything in your humor notebook?

Yeah, so one that I've worked on. I've had it slightly stuffed in the notebook for a little while is that in Los Angeles, downtown, about every maybe 50 yards or so, there's the drains that go down into the sewer system and everything like that. And I always thought it was really interesting. It says, no dumping. And then there's a picture of a dolphin afterwards. And I always think in my head, well, I've made this commitment, I will no longer throw dolphins down the drain.

So that's the kind of stuff that I'll put in my notebook. But honestly, the heroin people yesterday. Yes, that's that's 100% in there. And when I told the story, I might have, like, I got way more detailed with it and everything like that. But it's funny, like, going down and down the street and seeing a sign that says that, you know, we're the best ever. We do everything right. But the sign's upside down, so you have to read it. Do one of those things. Like, those are the kind of things if you just open your eyes and listen a little bit. Like, you can fill a notebook in a couple of days.

Yes. It writes itself, right. If you just pay attention.

It does. And then there's so many different applications of those types of things. So, like, the. The node dumping dolphins is, I think, really funny. As you were saying that, I was kind of also thinking, like, wait, is it dolphins who are doing the dumping? Like, are they the ones that need to be trained? Like, they're the ones coming by. But that, like, that could be. If you take a picture of that, that could then be a slide in your presentation, and you could talk about communication, or it could be set up something or just kind of something fun, like, hey, we can use humor for incongruity. Boom. Like, here's an example of incongruity for that. Or the, you know, example of that sign. Yeah, take a picture of that sign. And, like, here's someone who, like, they say they're so good at things, but what about this? Right? So you can. When you see humor out in the world, you can also then incorporate it into your work, and it can become a lesson. It can be a learning point. It can be a moment of kind of, like, humor inspiration for breaking up the day. For me. We. So we were chatting a little bit before the recording is, I got married. I did a zoom hybrid wedding. And so I've been, like, writing material and thinking about. That's what's in my notebook right now, is thinking about, like, okay, what are some of the jokes around that? Like, you know, there are. There are similarities between a zoom meeting and a zoom wedding. Like, in one, you need WI fi, and the other one, you need a wifey.

Terrible, terrible joke. In both you say, I do. Except for in the zoom meeting, you say, I do not hear you because you're on mute. The vowels are different, right? So it's just exploring. Like, okay, and. And this creates. Right. We. We talk about structure. We talked a little bit about a comic triple. Another great structure is what's called an association, where you create two connections. And the. The. The engineering part of it is like, okay, if I'm writing material for that, I can write down and on one list, what are 10 things related to a zoom meeting? Right. People being muted or getting delayed or a weird zoom background or having to kick someone out or whatever they are. Right. Being frozen. And then I can say, okay, wedding. What are 10 things related to wedding? The vows and this. Right. I can write those 10 things down. And now I can just look at those two lists to start to try to create humor from that. I can be like, oh, okay, well, what's the equivalent of like. So we had a zoom wedding, but it's like we had both people on the bride and the groom side in the zoom meeting. Should we have had them in separate zoom rooms to be able to sit on different sides of the aisle? Right. Like, there's that. Or what's the flower girl equivalent of this? So, like, we didn't necessarily have a flower girl, but we had someone put their virtual background to a bed of roses. Like, what are. Like, what are those equivalents? And I still haven't, like, finished working on it, but that gives me a process to take the initial observation. Okay, what's the similarity between a zoom meeting and a zoom wedding? And gives me some. Some things to work on as a way to create from there.

That's awesome. Yeah, I instantly thought about honeymoon. Like, if you have a zoom wedding, how does the honeymoon work out?

Like, yeah, that's a good. We just went on to Google Maps.

We went into Google Earth and pretended that we did a virtual walk around of the Louvre and Google Earth.

Where do you want to go exactly?

We went all over the world. Yeah, we did all seven continents in about six minutes. It was amazing.

I love it. It is funny too.

Like.

Like that weddings have gotten twice as hard during COVID but I also tell you that divorces have gotten four times easier. So I don't know if that means that there's going to be something that happens with the marriage rate in the United States, but also something to be aware of.

Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic. And like, I don't know, like, it's fitting for us because she and I met. Well, we say that we met through a friend. We met online. We met on Hinge, which we're married now, so that means we're unhinged, I think. But we. We met online, and I say we met through a friend, not because I'm ashamed, but because I consider the Internet my friend. Right. And so it's very fitting that we met. We met online. We get married online. It's a very fitting, kind of like closing, connecting piece. Right. So those are the types of humor things that you can build. And this is fantastic. I know you're taking. I need to take notes on that. That Google Earth honeymoon response because, like, that's. That's something like, that's good to add.

Yeah, it works.

But that was funny how that works. Yeah.

And so the thing that. That I noticed about keeping that little log in your phone is that I was only putting in the things that actually I got a laugh. And so then it does subconsciously train your mind what works. So you're always like, that's one thing that I learned from you is paying attention to what works then trains you to do more of what works. So you get better at it.

Yeah. You. You start to be like, oh, okay, I'm. I just made someone laugh. What was it that I did that made them laugh? You just become more aware of it. And this is a big, I think, valuable understanding for people is because most of the time when I talk about improv or stand up or. Or that kind of thing, there's. There's two responses. Some people. Some are a little bit on the Christian level, where they're like, you know what? I think I could do that. Right. They're like, I. I have some confidence. I made people laugh. I could probably do stand up. But a big majority of people are like, I could never do that. Right. Some. Some of the other coaches on the team kind of had that when we first started with that mentality of, like, I'm more introverted. I don't think I'm going to do well at this or whatever. But the reality is that every human. It's a. It's a. We. We say to humor is to human. Right. Because it's a very human trait to do. People have made other people laugh, maybe not intentionally before, but they do have that sense of humor. Everyone has that perspective. And so it is having a humor notebook, you start to recognize, like, oh, wait, maybe I do make, you know, my. My significant other or my friends laugh a little bit more than I thought. How can I take that ability and just amplify it a little bit more? How can I be slightly more intentional about it?

Yeah, that's good. Well, I would tell everybody to. One of the best investments you could make is to hire Drew. And kind of the way the system worked with us was.

I think, a little different than how you normally do it is you would do once a week, right. You do an hour a Week where you coach, and then at the end of the month, there would be the presentation or whatever. But his website is Humor that works calm. So humor that works dot com. And it will not only add humor to your business, it will help your team, your salespeople, your advisors, whatever it is, to kind of think of things more as a system and understand that something that seems. Seems unobtainable becomes very obtainable when you put a process to it. And you're such a great coach and so patient, and your system is so great. I can't recommend it enough. And I would tell anybody it's a great, you know, twist to what you've been doing in training already. That is a, you know, pleasant pattern interrupt.

Right.

Christian, would you add anything to that?

No, I just think that the. If you're trying to elevate your level of connection, remember the power of humor and having a strategy and a game plan and not winging it. Just like with everything, you know, it's. The work that you put in is indicative of the results that come out and that you can manufacture humor and that it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to be the person that always responds the fastest. You should have to be the most prepared. And I think that identifying those opportunities to inject the right inappropriate amount of humor, that was another thing I thought was really, really important. Understanding humoring up and humoring down in the business situations, like, that's vital stuff that Drew will teach you, too, in those classes, like understanding what the appropriate amount of what to do and when. How hard to be on yourself when you're making fun of yourself. Those are all great skills to learn in the business world.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate everything you do, Mr. Tarvin. We, you know, we love our time with you and what you taught us. And once again, his website is humorthatworks.com contact him and set up, you know, some ongoing zoom training. He can bring New York to your. To your business through the magic of the interwebs.

That is. Right. Well, yeah, no, I very much appreciate that. I had a great time working with the team. And in general, I would say, kind of to Christian's point is whether you work with me or not, it's just being a little bit more intentional about. About it, turning it into a habit so that you can develop that and find like, okay, what type of humor am I using each day? How can I incorporate that into my work? Being thinking about ways to use it as a way to solve problems. So I know I was talking With Chris prior to this, and we're talking about some examples of, like, when might humor be used? And. And diffusing tension is a great one. Like, he was given that example of, like, what would you say to, like, all right, what if someone is coming in and you have a mask policy and you have to wear a mask, and people are kind of a little bit thrown off about that. Like, what would you say? And it's like, one simple example is you can be like, all right, yes, yes, you do have to wear a mask. We. We have to cover at least, you know, the bottom half of our face. But the good news is that we don't have to cover up any of the car. Right. You get to see the full car in here if you're looking at it. Right. Or we're going to take a whole look under the hood, et cetera. Like, yeah, we can't look under this hood, but we're going to look at your. Under your actual hood. Like, just small things like that. Not necessarily going to be, like, comedy club worthy gold. It's not going to get you a Netflix comedy special, but it's something that will, like, make the per. It's going to relieve a little bit of that tension. It's going to make it a little bit more acceptable. You're going to call it, like. Like I said earlier, like, calling the moment or whatever. And it's about creating that connection, as Chris said at the very beginning about this. And there's research that shows it that we as humans have mirror neurons in our brain that mirror certain behaviors. Laughter and smiling are two of the biggest ones. Right. When we see someone smile, we are primed as humans to want to smile as well. And when we both do that, it creates a little bit more of a connection. It builds that. That relationship, something that you can still do virtually or that you can do in the. The room or whatever. So, no, I, I really enjoyed working with you all. I always enjoyed, you know, conversing with you all because we can geek up, geek out about this. It's not only like, it's like, let's take this, but let's jump into this. Let's see how it works. So I always enjoy being able to do that.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Drew. Thanks for coming on. And we'll. We'll talk real soon. Thank you.

See you soon.

Drew.

That was great with Andrew. So now we're going to go, Christian, you're going to help me with this. We're going to answer questions from the audience. So the voice Of God.

Do we have any good questions this week?

The voice of God is here and has many questions.

Question number one.

Hello, my name is Chris. Imagine that. And I'm with a Space center automotive. I was wondering if you had any literature on pay scales for service advisors and bookkeepers in particular, that it's not uncommon for advisors to gain over 100 grand with certain skills. Thank you for any information.

Advisors make exactly what they're worth. That's what I would say. It's different per market, per brand, per shop, all that, but you make exactly what you're worth.

I think it's also important to point out that the humor is infectious. God was even funny right there.

God, we need you to be serious with these questions.

God is always serious.

Stop trying to joke.

All attempts at humor are unintentional.

Question number two.

Question number two.

I have a question. Imagine that. Is it the responsibility of a service advisor to inform their customers of any or all warranty issues that directly involve their vehicle? Is it their responsibility to let the owner know there is an active warranty for a part in the car that may become faulty and the car shut down?

These questions are terrible. I. I think so, yeah. I guess, like, if you notice something while the car is in warranty and you're doing an inspection, you. You should tell the customer. Yeah. Now, some manufacturers don't want you to do that. They don't want you to upsell warranty.

So there's a balance there. But for the most part, I would treat it like it's my mom's car. And if it was my mom's car and there was something under warranty that needed attention, I would tell her.

I agree. I think too that God was talking about, you know, if there's a part that maybe has a warranty type extension, I think that that could lead credibility because if you're the person that has all that information, you share it with the client. That's really the job of the service advisor, is to educate. And if we've got information, I don't know why we would hold it back. But there's definitely a fine line between identifying items that have failed and really actually trying to pick out warranty for one's personal benefit. So you have to. You can't go too far on the other side of that. But anytime you have information, my belief is that we exchange it with the clients.

Yeah.

Okay.

This next question comes from. Sorry, not sorry, Canadian.

That's actually Sorry, not sorry.

Yeah, they're not really sorry, sorry, not sorry, Canadian.

Hey, Guys, loving the podcast. My biggest issue right now is my GM doesn't feel we need a third advisor. We write 25 to 30 ROs a day and are growing. I'm adding a film install bay tech next week and replacing him with another detailer. I just interviewed and hired a new factory trained tech bringing our shop body count to 10. We have we net 48% of gross up from 42% year over year. I moved from parts manager to fixed manager last year and we currently average 41k net per month this year. And I'm struggling to keep up with my own day to day responsibilities. I feel like my GM doesn't trust my judgment or is expecting more water from this rock. I'm getting frustrated with the frozen pay plan and so are the advisors Covid excuse. And I'm struggling with the glass ceilings. I keep hitting any ideas before I take a hammer to said stealing. Also can't wait to sign up for some training once this pay freeze BS is sorted out.

Yeah, so the, the first thing I would say is if you want get you know contact us at info at Chris Collins Inc. And schedule your general manager and yourself to do a strategy session with us and we'll kind of go through that and, and try to try well successfully. We will make the case for less is more and that the customer experience will get you more per repair order and it will help your retention and the customers will come back which then in return will help you sell more cars. So we, we can help you with that. I love the specific numbers in your question. I really love that. In no way does it does an Advisor succeed riding 25 a day. There's no way. You can't communicate, you can't over deliver, you can't make friends. It's too much day in and day out. You could do it every once in a while for a day. But if that's the reality of an advisor, the other thing I would say is a rule of thumb. You guys might want to write this down. The rule of thumb is three texts for every advisor. So I can instantly see when I see that there's 10 texts and two advisors that there's, there's you know, obtainable increase in dollars per ticket just by adding another advisor because you know you're, you're going to lose customers because we can't present what, what is needed. And also the phones aren't getting answered and all that too. So just, just the increase in, in how many more people you customers you can bring in by answering the phones. And having that other advisor is life changing. So, yeah, reach out and we'll help you with that.

Good question. Question number three was pretty good.

Glad we stuck the landing. That's it for questions this week.

He's on fire.

God is on fire. He's funny. I love it. Well, thank.

Thank you.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Christian. I hope you guys got a lot from Drew and once Again, his website, humorthatworks.com reach out to him. I'm telling you, it's life changing for you if you have him coach your team. It was for us. It was a blast and it will make everybody see things in a different light. And it's just contagious for morale and the culture of your department or business to have that humor. You know, it changes everything. People learn more, they retain more, and they love coming to work when the environment is fun like that. And he has a way of injecting that. So check him out. Reach out to him and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

Thanks for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at chrisbulldogcollins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.